School ethos is not the barrier to teaching Relationship and Sexuality Education [1] (RSE) it can be perceived to be, the Dáil Committee on Gender Equality has been told.
Following a review, “what we found was that the biggest barriers to inclusive effective and child-centred RSE was teacher confidence and competence,” said Dr Patrick Sullivan, deputy chief executive of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).
“What can happen is that, with a teacher who is feeling unconfident and maybe a little bit unsure of themselves in the classroom, that they can think about, ‘maybe I can’t address that particular issue, maybe it’s not age and stage appropriate for me to speak about this issue with these groups of children,’” he said.
NCCA education officer Annette Honan told the Committee how “we met groups of teachers, students, school leaders and parents across 20 schools as part of the review of a variety of types of schools and we didn’t fudge it. We directly asked: ‘Is school ethos a barrier to more effective RSE or is it inhibiting you in any way in addressing topics across the curriculum?’ It didn’t come up unprompted,” she said.