The board of the Catholic Education Partnership has made a submission to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment on the draft Primary Curriculum specifications. The submission may be found here.
The following are the key recommendations from our submission:
- the spiritual aspect of the education and development be given explicit recognition through the curriculum;
- the ‘values’ throughout the curriculum be explicitly linked to the particular ethos of the school, and the relevance of the Patron’s Programme in that regard;
- explicit recognition be given to the ‘Patron’s Programme’ of schools of all patronages
- Wellbeing be treated as an aspect of school culture (i.e. of its ethos) rather than as an activity confined to a particular subject area and that the contribution of religious belief to wellbeing is recognised;
- World Religions and Beliefs be understood to be addressed on their own terms and in the spirit of respectful dialogue and encounter, beginning from the child’s secure sense of their own identity;
- the European dimension to Ireland’s history, culture, traditions, politics, languages and beliefs be recognised across the curriculum; and that,
- the full potential for cross-curricular learning across all six curriculum areas and subjects be identified and encouraged.