Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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411. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question No. 334 of 29 June 2021, her views on the setting up of an official channel by her Department with trained persons employed by her Department who systematically visit schools in order to provide young persons with essential lifesaving skills (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37459/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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As you are aware, there are no plans at present to introduce First Aid into the curriculum.

Choices regarding educational materials, textbooks and other educational products and services are made by individual schools and their boards of management, not by my Department. Schools are free to choose whatever resources they feel supports the delivery of the curriculum in their school.

My Department provides clear guidance to schools on the engagement of outside speakers and on the use of external resources to assist in delivering the curriculum. These guidelines are most recently outlined in updated circular 0042/2018 for primary schools and 0043/2018 for post primary schools.

These can be found at the following Links:

Where an outside speaker is engaged by a school, he or she should be engaged in the context of delivering a planned and comprehensive programme in the school.  He or she should not be brought in to replace the school programme but to enhance it.

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Agricultural Science is a crucial element of the science curriculum at Leaving Cert level. The NCCA Subject Development group included IASTA. Integral to the specification development was the retention of the practical component, which is viewed as core to the subject.

The core strand underpinning the specification is “Scientific Practices”, and the completion of the Individual Investigative Study is supported by this strand. The importance of this strand is demonstrated through the current award weighting of 25% of the total mark to the candidates for their Individual Investigative Study. The remaining 75% is awarded for their terminal written examination.

The other 3 strands are broken into areas which are familiar to teachers: Soils, Crops and Animals, all of which were contained in the old curriculum. The format of the new agricultural science specification is based on learning outcomes rather than a list of content.   Teachers are being supported in engaging with a specification in this format through the Support Services CPD programme. Aligning relevant content from the old curriculum to that of the new specification will aid some teachers in their understanding of the learning outcomes and in turn will enable them to identify where the various cross cutting themes would be applicable.

As such, I consider the  new agricultural science syllabus in place in secondary schools for the leaving certificate programme to be relevant, practical and of benefit to the learning outcomes of students.