Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I have a few questions for Dr. Keating, who has experience of primary classrooms and referenced curriculum overload. She knows that a lot of this ends up happening in an SPHE lesson, which is 30 minutes per week and, right or wrong, is the one that is most easily pushed to the side. Are we seeing interface with the NCCA to help redesign? Our SPHE curriculum is still largely from 1999 - two decades ago when the world was completely different. If we are interfacing with the NCCA, are we seeing follow through in terms of CPD courses and summer courses for teachers? Are we seeing it in terms of in-service?

As much as the SPHE curriculum was designed in a different world, teachers inhabit a different world that also lags two decades behind the reality of the children in front of them. That needs to be updated. Is there sufficient interface between the type of expertise the witnesses are developing and the NCCA, and then translating that down into the primary or secondary school classroom?