My Department and its support services continue to work to support all schools and teachers to deliver the full breadth and balance of the curriculum. Physical Education is a core part of the curriculum at primary level which seeks to satisfy the physical needs of the child through a consistent and comprehensive experience of movement and play that challenges the child to realise his or her individual physical potential.
The redeveloped curriculum specification for Primary Wellbeing, including SPHE and PE, was recently published by my Department. The Wellbeing Curriculum aims to provide all children with a balanced, inclusive, age and developmentally appropriate understanding of human development and sexuality. This includes fostering healthy attitudes and relationships while recognising the diversity of human experience.
The Wellbeing Curriculum includes the subjects of PE and SPHE. Learning in the Wellbeing Curriculum is organised across four Strands:
• Movement Education
• Emotional and Relational Education
• Health Education
• Community and Belonging.
The PE activity areas, includes aquatics which aims to provide children with water and land-based learning to develop essential safety skills depending on access to suitable environments, transport and qualified instructors.
The Physical Education curricula at both primary and post-primary level have been developed on the understanding that facilities available to schools vary. Consequently, they offer a level of flexibility that allows each individual school to design a programme that can be delivered using the resources and supports available to it.
Where schools decide to provide pupils with swimming lessons in school time, they are expected to fund them from resources already available to them. Under the Rules for National Schools, while voluntary contributions may be sought, no school may charge a fee as a condition of admission to an activity provided within school hours.
Significant investment of €9 million was made available to primary and special schools at the end of 2024. This was to ensure that schools have essential resources and materials to deliver a curriculum that meets the needs of all learners. The first of the grants were specifically aimed at supporting the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and Arts education.
There will be multi-annual funding to support all areas of the curriculum, with future allocations depending on budgetary considerations and emerging needs as we roll out the curriculum nationwide.
This investment demonstrates the Department’s ongoing commitment to enhancing primary education and supporting all primary and special schools in providing a robust, well-rounded age-appropriate curriculum.
