Written answers

Wednesday, 15 September 2021

Department of Education and Skills

School Curriculum

Photo of Alan DillonAlan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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446. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the process to make submissions to the primary school curriculum and assessment board to support an innovate product that will enhance the primary school teaching methodology. [44021/21]

Photo of Norma FoleyNorma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The current policy of the Department of Education is not to endorse or promote any particular programme, product or publication to support the teaching of subjects. There are limited exceptions where the department has procured textbooks or resources in order to fill a specific and urgent need, for example Leaving Certificate Japanese and Italian.  Apart from a small number of prescribed texts at post-primary level, determined by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), the decisions on which, textbooks, programmes and resources, if any,  to use in primary and post-primary schools are taken at school level. 

Curriculum specifications and prescribed syllabus material are determined by the NCCA and it is the responsibility of each individual school to select the resources, if any, that it will use to support its implementation of the curriculum.

Curriculum development work is carried out on behalf of the NCCA by Boards and development groups. Members of development groups are nominated as representatives of their nominating bodies which comprise the key stakeholders and partners in education. These groups consist of people with a wide range of relevant experience and expertise and memberships of such groups can be viewed here ncca.ie/en/about-ncca/boards-and-development-groups .

The knowledge and skills that students are expected to gain across all curriculum areas are published by the NCCA in subject specifications on .  The subject specifications do not set out the specific detail of how each topic should be addressed. Rather they set out the important learning in broad learning outcomes. Teachers use these learning outcomes to plan teaching and learning and have considerable flexibility in deciding how they will teach subject content so that it is appropriate to their context. Importantly, they can also exercise their professional judgment in deciding which resources or textbooks, if any, will best support them in the classroom.

In relation to developments underway at primary level, the NCCA published the Draft Primary Curriculum Framework for consultation in February 2020. Originally, it was intended that the consultation would be open for up to eight months to ensure widespread engagement with the proposals it contains. However, due to the pandemic and the circumstances in schools, the consultation was re-designed. The re-design has two phases:

Phase 1 involved engagement with national stakeholder organisations and bodies, and was open from February 2020 to January 2021 during which time meetings were conducted with over 50 organisations. 140 written submissions were also received.

Phase 2 will involve engagement with the general public, teachers, school leaders, parents and, importantly, children. This phase will open in late-October 2021 and remain open into early 2022.

The views of participants will be collected through open invitation focus groups, online questionnaires, written submissions and through working directly with school communities.

All information is shared widely through the NCCA’s social media channels and on their website within the ‘primary developments’ section -

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