Established Options For a Wellbeing Programme
Schools have three options in relation to SPHE from September 2017. Firstly, they can continue to work with the current SPHE syllabus (2006) and provide 70 hours contact time (one 40 minute class per week) for students over the 3 years of JC. However, this curriculum must be adapted to take cognisance of the Wellbeing indicators. Alternatively, they can introduce the SPHE short course (2014), which is currently available and has been developed by NCCA. This short course is designed for approx. 100 hours.
Short courses require 100 hours of student engagement. It is important to note that the short course requires, in a school with 40min classes, that at least four class periods (88 hours) are required across the three years for the delivery of the short course. The remaining 12 hours would be met during other activities relating to the short course (visits in, tours out, focus mornings, etc.) This would see an increase from the current provision in many schools who offer the existing syllabus in three classes across the three years (66 hours). Short Courses can be run over two or three years.
If a school continues to use the traditional syllabus, they are encouraged to consider using the CBA from the SPHE Short Courses to assess students’ learning
Considerations in planning for Junior Cycle Wellbeing 2020-21 available at this link
SPHE back to school lessons available at this link - one for 1st yrs, one for 2nd/3rd yrs and one for 5th/6th yrs.
PDST have a dedicated SPHE portal Health and Wellbeing