Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Well-being and mental health are major priorities for my Department and are set out in the Action Plan for Education.  In the context of increasing concerns about suicide and mental health among young people, it is crucial that we place a major focus on this issue and that is what we are doing through the Action Plan for Education.  The Deputy is aware it contains a number of actions in regard to both science and language education, which are also priority areas.  An ambitious ten-year foreign languages strategy and a STEM education policy statement and implementation plan will shortly be published by the Department.

The allocation of up to 400 hours for well-being was agreed as part of the new framework for the junior cycle in 2015. I am satisfied that the time allocated for the well-being programme, which is a minimum of 300 hours over three years from 2017, increasing to 400 hours from 2020, will not negatively impact on the time available for other subjects such as science and languages. This is because well-being is built on a number of pillars, which include the currently-offered subjects of civic, social and political education, CSPE, physical education, PE, and social, personal and health education, SPHE. These three existing curriculum inputs contribute 275 hours of the 300 hours that schools will be required to allocate to well-being. The extra 25 hours amounts to about 8 hours, or 12 40-minute classes, per year. It is important to note that well-being is an area of learning, not a subject, and students will learn about it through a wide range of curricular subjects and through the provision of whole-school activities. There therefore will be no requirement for schools to find an additional 100 hours from within the timetable. Most schools will reduce the number of subjects undertaken by students to reduce curriculum overload, as advised in the junior cycle framework and in Departmental circulars. This will also allow increased flexibility to schools with regard to time allocation.

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