Minister for Education and Youth Helen McEntee TD launches Redeveloped Primary Curriculum specifications for all primary and special schools

Minister for Education and Youth, Helen McEntee TD, today launched the Redeveloped Primary Curriculum Specifications for all primary and special schools across Ireland. This marks the most comprehensive transformation of primary education in over a generation, designed to equip children with the skills they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

Speaking at the launch, Minister McEntee said:

A Curriculum for the Future

The redeveloped curriculum is designed to support high-quality, inclusive, and evidence-based learning for all children. It recognises the right of every child to thrive and make progress across all areas of learning and development, and it views teachers as skilled professionals who play a central role in children’s learning from early childhood through primary and special education and into post-primary education.

Key features of the new curriculum include:

Integrated Learning: Children will experience a more connected curriculum that builds key competencies such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication – skills essential for navigating the real world.

Being a Communicator: Through the Primary Language Curriculum/Curaclam Teanga Na Bunscoile, children will deepen their understanding of English and Irish and begin to develop basic competence in a modern foreign language, laying the foundation for plurilingualism and intercultural understanding.

Innovation: The curriculum fosters curiosity and innovation, encouraging children to explore, design, and create through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Playful and Inquiry-Based Learning: Greater emphasis is placed on active, engaging, and inquiry-led learning, with more opportunities for outdoor education and child-led exploration.

Being Creative: Children will express themselves confidently and creatively such as through Art, Drama, Music, and emerging artforms to include dance and media arts.

Being an Active Citizen: Children will learn to see themselves as active citizens with rights and responsibilities, empowered to engage with local and global issues.

Being Well: A new Wellbeing specification integrates Physical Education and Social, Personal and Health Education equips children with the knowledge and skills needed to lead active, healthy, and fulfilling lives.

Minister McEntee said:

The redeveloped curriculum places a strong emphasis on fun, active and hands-on learning. Children are encouraged to explore, create, and discover through play, inquiry and real-world experiences. The STEM curriculum specification introduces children to the wonders of Living Things, Materials, and Energy and Forces through scientific inquiry. Children will explore how the world works, ask questions, and carry out investigations. From magnetism in early stages to electricity in later stages, the curriculum builds a strong foundation in STEM and prepares children for future learning in many different areas.

The new Arts Education specification brings Art, Drama and Music together under a shared structure that encourages children to explore, create, perform and respond. Children are described as “arts-makers”, using their senses, imagination and experiences to express themselves through a wide range of artforms – including dance and media arts.

This approach helps build confidence, curiosity and a lifelong love of learning.

Led by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), five new curriculum specifications have been developed through extensive research, consultation and collaboration with education partners and stakeholders to include school leaders, teachers, children, and parents. Building on the strengths of the 1999 curriculum, they respond directly to today’s challenges, changing priorities, and the evolving needs of learners.

The specifications are:

• Arts Education (Art, Drama, Music)
• Language (including Modern Foreign Languages from Stage 3)
• Social and Environmental Education (History and Geography)
• STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)
• Wellbeing (Physical Education and Social Personal and Health Education)

Successful curriculum enactment is a whole-system responsibility that involves every individual in the education community. The enactment of the redeveloped primary curriculum will be a gradual and carefully planned process. This phased approach will allow schools to adapt at a manageable pace, giving teachers the opportunity to familiarise themselves with new teaching methods, pedagogical principles, and curriculum content.

The 2025/2026 school year will be an introductory year focusing on the Primary Curriculum Framework. From the 2026/2027 school year, schools can avail of focused support in one curriculum area each year, with each area taking two years to fully enact. Schools can choose the order of enactment, but the Wellbeing specification must be one of the first three areas selected.

Enacting the redeveloped curriculum is a collective journey of learning and change for everyone. This journey builds on existing knowledge and practice, and through collaboration, sharing, and dialogue, deeper understandings of the curriculum will develop to support meaningful enactment.

The programme of support will last for at least six years. It will be facilitated through whole-school closure days, sustained in-school support and supplementary online supports.

In preparation for the introduction of the redeveloped curriculum, a significant investment of €9.7 million was made available to primary and special schools in 2024. This funding ensures that schools have the essential resources and materials for the STEM and Arts curricula, allowing them to deliver a curriculum that meets the needs of all learners. It is foreseen that further funding will be required to support the introduction of the redeveloped primary school curriculum in the years ahead.

The redeveloped curriculum marks the most significant transformation of children’s learning in over a generation, building on the Primary Curriculum Framework (2023), the Primary Mathematics Curriculum (2023), and the Primary Languages Curriculum/Curaclam Teanga na Bunscoile (2019).

• The Primary School Curriculum introduced in 1999 has guided education for 26 years. However, changes in education nationally and internationally, and developments in society, created a need to redevelop the curriculum for today’s learners.
• This redevelopment has been led by the NCCA and focused on reimagining the future of education in Ireland’s primary and special schools.

The curriculum redevelopment was informed by four interconnected areas of activity:

1. Research: The development work drew on an extensive body of contemporary national and international research located here on the NCCA website. It also drew on the Children’s School Lives (CSL) study, the national longitudinal study which tracks 4,000 children in 189 primary schools in Ireland.
2. Networks: The Schools Forum, a network consisting of 60 primary schools, post-primary schools and preschools from across the country worked together to tease out ideas from research, bringing their school experiences to discussions. Detailed work on the detail of curriculum specifications was also carried out with 5 separate Schools Networks.
3. Deliberations: Close work with the education partners through the representative structures of the NCCA, and with wider stakeholders through events such as curriculum seminars, and the Leading Out seminar series.
4. Consultation: Findings from the extensive consultation on the Draft Primary Curriculum Framework including a consultation with primary school-aged children were integral to the finalisation of the framework; while the Consultation on Draft Primary Curriculum Specifications provided detailed feedback on the draft specifications across the five curriculum areas.

The Framework:

• Sets out the vision, principles, key competencies, and structure for children’s learning.
• Details time allocations, approaches to learning, teaching and assessment.
• Introduces and expands aspects of learning including STEM Education, Modern Foreign. Languages, Technology, Religions, beliefs and worldviews, and a broader Arts Education.
• Holds increased emphasis on existing areas such as Physical Education and Social, Personal. and Health Education (SPHE) (Wellbeing), and digital learning.
• Provides greater agency and flexibility for teachers and children.
• Links with learning experiences provided through the themes of Aistear: the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework and connects with the subjects, key skills and statements of learning in the Framework for Junior Cycle.

There are five curriculum specifications for the redeveloped Primary School Curriculum

• Arts Education (Art, Drama and Music)
• Language (including Modern Foreign Languages from Stage 3)
• Social and Environmental Education (History and Geography)
• Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education
• Wellbeing (Physical Education and Social, Personal and Health Education).

The curriculum areas support an integrated approach to learning and teaching in stages 1 and 2, before becoming more differentiated into subjects in stages 3 and 4 to reflect children’s growing awareness of subjects as a way of organising the world.

• Builds on the successes and strengths associated with the 1999 curriculum while recognising and responding to challenges and changing needs and priorities.
• Supports agency and flexibility.
• Connects what and how children learn across preschool, primary and post-primary schools.
• Identifies updated priorities for children’s learning.
• Changes how the curriculum is structured and presented.

Supports a variety of pedagogical approaches and strategies with assessment central to teaching and learning.

For further information see: https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-education/circulars/primary-curriculum-for-primary-and-special-schools/