Ms Evelyn O'Connor:

On the Senator's point about not overloading the teachers and what else we can do, the curriculum from early childhood to senior cycle now offers multiple opportunities for the development of digital skills and digital literacy but through integration into the curriculum and the classroom. There is additional explicit curriculum provision as well.

On the Senator's comments with regard to the particular school and climate action, well done to that school. I am delighted to hear that. One of my areas of responsibility is education in sustainable development. We have had one strategy and we are in the process of developing another, which we will be lining up with the sustainable development goals. As part of that, we are ensuring that sustainable development is integrated into specifications. I would be delighted to send the Senator a one-page outline of how currently the sustainable development goals are integrated into the curriculum. We followed up with the National Council for Curriculum Assessment, NCCA, yesterday to remind it to continue, as it develops new specifications, to move more and more in this direction. The NCCA confirmed it is doing that and that it is very conscious that it needs to move more in that area as well.

On STEM, I mentioned that we have an Education Policy Statement 2017-2026. One of the key pillars of that policy is to enhance early years practitioner and teacher capacity and to support STEM education practise. We have developed a continuous professional development, CPD, framework which supports the cross-sector design and delivery of STEM CPD such that teachers can avail of that. That will help them to deliver in the classroom.