Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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437. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will formalise sun safety in the primary and post-primary school curricula, to integrate age-appropriate sun smart education (HSE2025), thereby enabling children to develop healthy habits from a young age. [65986/25]

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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438. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will introduce the HSE’s sun smart school toolkit into the national curriculum for social, personal, and health education. [65987/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 437 and 438 together.

Schools have a role to play in supporting their students to develop the key skills and knowledge to enable them to make informed choices in different aspects of their lives. This is mainly done through the Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) programme, which is a mandatory part of the Primary and Junior Cycle curriculum. The SPHE specification provides vital opportunities for the development of children’s wellbeing in the physical, social, emotional and intellectual domains.

As part of the redevelopment of SPHE/RSE curricula, in line with the Programme for Government, an updated Primary Wellbeing specification, which encompasses SPHE and PE, is being introduced into schools in the current school year. The learning outcomes of the Health Education strand include that children should be able to ‘demonstrate an awareness of how to nurture their wellbeing by considering positive choices in areas such as food, hygiene, sleep, rest, and meaningful physical activity’ and ‘to demonstrate knowledge of the importance of seeking permission and following safety rules when dealing with substances and medicines'.

Following an extensive period of consultation, an updated specification for Junior Cycle was introduced in schools for all first years in September 2023. The ‘Making Healthy Choices’ strand of the specifications includes among its learning outcomes that students should be able to ‘consider the multifaceted nature of health and wellbeing, and evaluate what being healthy might look like for different adolescents, including how food, physical activity, sleep/rest and hygiene contribute to health and wellbeing’, and to ‘demonstrate skills and strategies to help make informed choices that support health and wellbeing and apply them in real-life situations’.

An updated Senior Cycle specification was approved and published in September 2024. Schools have until September 2027 to introduce the specification for students entering fifth year of the Leaving Certificate Established programme, to accommodate the necessary planning and preparatory work. The learning outcomes of the ‘Health and Wellbeing’ strand of the specification include that students should be able to ‘explore the determinants of good health’ and to ‘investigate ways a person can influence their holistic health, including physical activity, food, sleep, social connections, positive self-image and connecting with nature, and discuss how these are related’.

A suite of resources have been developed to support teaching the updated Junior Cycle SPHE curriculum. One of these resources, HSE's Making Healthy Choices Unit 2, specifically includes SunSmart activities and directly addresses the topic of how young people can protect against the risk of skin cancer.

Resources to support the new Senior Cycle SPHE curriculum are currently under development. Within one of these resources (Health and Wellbeing 6) there will be a lesson linked a learning outcome which indicates that students should be able to consider strategies for self-care that can help maintain health and prevent ill-health. This will provide an opportunity to highlight the importance of sun protection and the risks associated with sun-bed use.

Decisions on which programmes and initiatives, if any, schools participate in are taken at school level.

It is important to stress that only the Stay Safe Programme in primary school and the use of its resources is mandatory and must be taught. Outside of that, each resource is considered in respect to the particular needs and interests of children, their parents, the wider school community, and the school’s SPHE and RSE policies. Ultimately, it is the school’s decision whether particular resources are used.

Decisions around textbooks and other teaching and learning resources are made at whole-school level to suit the specific context of the school and the needs of the children within the class / school. The curriculum enables teachers to be autonomous in these decisions and as such is not prescriptive in the ways that schools approach the delivery of the curriculum.