The Primary Curriculum Framework forms the basis for high-quality teaching, learning and assessment for all children attending primary and special schools. This framework, developed through NCCA’s process of working with networks of schools and teachers, research, deliberation and consultation, will guide the development of the specifications for each of the curriculum areas.
You can find the Primary Curriculum Framework and information about how it was developed below.
The Draft Primary Curriculum Framework was published for consultation in February 2020. The consultation was carried out over two phases between February 2020 and the end of March 2022. The aim of the consultation was to ensure that any person or organisation that wished to express their views on the draft framework would be enabled to do so, and this was achieved through a range of methods for providing feedback.
The report on the consultation on the Draft Primary Curriculum Framework presents the findings from this extensive and comprehensive consultation process. You can read the report here:
There are two documents and a video published alongside this report, including:
In total, 174 written submissions were received, and authors could choose whether to allow publication or not. The 147 submissions for which consent to publish was received have been published below. You can read the report on the written submissions on pages 67 - 76 in the consultation report which is published in the previous tab.
There is considerable diversity across the submissions, and all were reviewed and categorised according to their main focus. This is not to suggest that individual submissions only address a single main point. The intention was to identify groupings to facilitate ease of navigation through the very large number of individual submissions. The main categories which emerged across the 174 submissions are:
- Inclusion
- Diversity
- Language
- Ethos
- Subject specific
- Civic society
- General (mainly implementation/ system issues)
As many of the submissions addressed issues directly related to specification development and/or enactment of the curriculum, they will continue to be a source of information for Council’s work in the years ahead.