Dr. Patrick Sullivan:

I might come in there. In 2017, we were asked to look at the scheduling and structure of the primary school curriculum and this was the foundation block on which we built towards the primary curriculum framework, the red document I have to hand, which sets out the policy for primary and special schools that was agreed and published in 2023. In looking at the time across the curriculum, we consulted on a range of options for the use of time and two key findings emerged. First, teachers, school leaders and children described very hurried learning experiences in their primary schools. There was a feeling of being rushed to the end, with pupils closing their maths books, for example, and moving immediately to their Irish books. Children, in particular, spoke about needing bigger blocks of time to immerse themselves in learning, while teachers also spoke about the pressurised aspect. Teachers pointed to the erosion of what was discretionary or flexible time in the curriculum, which was being given over to different policies and strategies that had come into the primary school space over the years. That was a key priority in restoring that flexible time.

The second finding from that consultation was that children felt they did not have enough time for two key areas of the curriculum, from their perspective. One was physical education, and we know we have been an outlier among the OECD and the European Union in respect of time allocations for physical education. The other was social, personal and health education, SPHE-----