The Department of Education will today release details of a revamped primary school curriculum that will be introduced gradually across all primary and special schools starting next year, reports RTE.
For the first time, students in 5th and 6th class will receive lessons on various sexual orientations, including homosexuality and bisexuality. The updated curriculum also allows for children to begin learning about puberty earlier than they currently do.
Students will start learning a modern foreign language from 5th class onward, and there will be a significantly stronger emphasis on STEM subjects, reports RTE.
The revised curriculum is organised into five learning categories: Arts Education; Language (including Modern Foreign Languages); Social and Environmental Education; STEM Education; and Wellbeing, which includes PE and SPHE.
This update replaces the existing primary curriculum that has been in use for 26 years.
The development of the new curriculum is based on eight years of extensive research. This included input from educators, parents, and about 4,000 children, along with a wide-ranging consultation process that welcomed feedback from individuals and organisations.
For the first time in Ireland, primary school pupils in 5th and 6th class will be taught about different sexual orientations. The current syllabus does not address this topic at all, reports RTE.
In the Wellbeing section under ‘Learning Outcomes,’ the curriculum outlines that children will “begin to understand sexual orientation as describing attraction to someone of a different gender, the same gender or more than one gender”.
There is no mention of gender identity within the revised curriculum, reports RTE.
Teachers will have the option to start discussing puberty with children from third class onward, a shift from the current practice of waiting until 6th class. This change reflects how children are now generally older when entering school.
Previously, children would typically start school at age four, but since the introduction of two free preschool years, most now start junior infants at age five or even six.
As a result, many students are already experiencing puberty by the time it’s discussed in 6th class, reports RTE.
Children involved in the curriculum consultations said they were often taught about puberty only after experiencing it themselves.
A new aspect of the curriculum is an increased focus on the concept of ‘consent’. While the topic will be introduced, it will relate to general ideas—like the right to say ‘no’ or to change one’s mind—and not to consent in a sexual context, reports RTE.
The Wellbeing subject will see the total allocated time for PE and SPHE doubled.
PE itself has undergone a full revision, with more focus on basic movement abilities such as jumping, running, skipping, throwing, and catching, reports RTE.
Compared with the current curriculum, the new version greatly enhances the focus on STEM—grouping science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as one cohesive area of learning for the first time.
The goal is to help children engage with real-world challenges, particularly by using digital technologies.
Another new feature is that all children will begin learning a modern foreign language in primary school for the first time. This initiative will support a plurilingual approach alongside English and Irish, starting with cultural awareness and progressing to simple language use—like greetings or ordering food—from 5th class, reports RTE.
The Arts Education section—comprising music, drama, and visual art—has also been expanded to offer a richer experience. It now includes newer forms such as digital art and dance.
There will be a dedicated emphasis on Irish art, with children encouraged to engage in art creation themselves, reports RTE.
Also new in the Social and Environmental Education area is a requirement that all students, regardless of their school’s ethos, will learn about global religions through historical and geographic lenses.
According to the Department of Education, key objectives of the revised curriculum include better linking learning from preschool through to post-primary levels and adapting to modern learning priorities and challenges.
The department describes the curriculum change as the most far-reaching in more than a generation—aimed at helping children build essential skills to thrive in a fast-changing world, while also supporting inclusive, research-backed education for everyone, reports RTE.
Minister for Education and Youth Helen McEntee said the new curriculum reflected the world children were growing up in, “one that is fast-changing, interconnected, and full of opportunity”.
“Our goal is to ensure every child in Ireland receives an education that is inclusive, empowering, and deeply relevant to their lives,” she said, reports RTE.
Minister McEntee said: “This curriculum is about giving every child the tools they need to succeed – not just in school, but in life.
“It’s about nurturing their talents, supporting their wellbeing, and helping our children develop as confident learners and active citizens in a changing world.cIt includes an increased focus on language skills and STEM, giving children the tools to communicate with each other and have the curiosity, creativity and solutions to shape the world around them,” reports RTE.
On Morning Ireland on RTÉ, Minister McEntee explained that the revised curriculum gives schools flexibility to dedicate more time to areas aligned with their ethos or beliefs.
She said that all schools whatever their ethos can still have a significant amount of time that can be applied through the patron’s programme, “whether it’s an Educate Together community school or a Catholic or Protestant school or Church of Ireland”, reports RTE.
“There’s more ownership of the schools if they want to add different time to different subjects.”
Ms McEntee said the environment and social pillar, is “about looking at other religious beliefs. It’s about looking at other worldviews”.
“And I think given the world we live in today, given what’s happening in the world, it’s really important that we’re not just focused on our own ethos, on our own curriculum,” she said, reports RTE.
“We know that our schools are going to schools where there’s 20 and 30 different nationalities in the school. It’s really, really important that we understand who everybody is, where they come from, and what their beliefs might be,” reports RTE.
Minister McEntee acknowledged that there has been some resistance to the new curriculum, saying that some concerns are based on misinformation about the contents.
She said she wanted young children to understand when they were leaving school what “basic attraction is” and to “understand what it is to respect each other”, reports RTE.
She said the misinformation surrounded what was and was not in the curriculum and whether it was age-appropriate.
“I think any suggestion that what teachers are going to be teaching in the curriculum is not age appropriate is incorrect,” reports RTE.
She added that sex education had always been taught in primary schools, and the focus on consent was not about sex but a young person understanding how to say yes, or no and being able to change their opinion.
On STEM, she noted that some schools were already introducing coding to children as young as five or six.
“It is a computational thinking, it is a problem solving in a way that is fun that is different. But at the same time they’re learning. And obviously as they get older in fifth and sixth class it is in a much more detailed and a more focused way,” she said, reports RTE.
Ms McEntee has said the new primary school curriculum was firstly about ensuring learning was “fun” for children.
“This is the first time the curriculum for primary school students has changed in 26 years – so the world has changed, the world in which our young people live has changed, so this is about making sure that first and foremost learning is fun, that children are going into school in an environment where they’re learning about the world around them and that they’re applying skills in a way that maybe they hadn’t before,” reports RTE.
She added the curriculum was integrated in a way it was not before but also focused on what had worked well.
The minister added Ireland had some of the best reading outcomes in the world, fantastic teachers and schools, so the curriculum was about building on that while adapting, reports RTE.
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