Primary School Curriculum Curaclam na Bunscoile - NCCA

Chapter 3 Key issues in primary education
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Pluralism
Equality and fairness
of access
Partnership
The curriculum has a particular responsibility in promoting tolerance and
respect for diversity in both the school and the community. Children come
from a diversity of cultural, religious, social, environmental and ethnic
backgrounds, and these engender their own beliefs, values, and aspirations.
The curriculum acknowledges the centrality of the Christian heritage and
tradition in the Irish experience and the Christian identity shared by the
majority of Irish people. It equally recognises the diversity of beliefs, values
and aspirations of all religious and cultural groups in society.
A central aim of education is to ensure equality of opportunity for all
children. Different factors, including socio-economic disadvantage, can
impinge seriously on the child’s legitimate entitlement to educational
fulfilment. In the context of the general response of the educational system
to the inhibiting effects of such social and economic disadvantage and their
implications for children’s learning, the curriculum offers the school and the
teacher a flexible framework through which the learning requirements of all
children may be addressed. It recognises, too, the importance of providing
appropriate support, in the form of human and physical resources, and of
curriculum adaptation to schools to enable them to satisfy the needs of the
children they serve.
Stereotyped expectations of gender roles can also inhibit the child’s
educational achievement. It is important that school and classroom
planning ensure an equal educational experience for both boys and girls
and that teachers are consistently aware of their own expectations and
assumptions in the day-to-day life of the classroom.
One of the features of the design and construction of the curriculum has
been the process of consultation through which it was produced and the
participation and co-operation of all the relevant partners and interests in
this process. These included parents, teachers, management bodies, the
Department of Education and Science, third-level education, industry and
the trade unions. It takes account, consequently, of the concerns and
aspirations of a variety of interests and reflects a multi-faceted social and
educational perspective. Partnership and co-operation among management,
parents and teachers will also characterise the successful planning and
implementation of the curriculum in primary schools.