The Ministry of Education has developed new Curriculum Documents for Primary Education. These envisage preparing our children with the knowledge, skills and dispositions to optimise their own development, to constitute a caring, respectful and socially conscious citizenry and to competently lead our country onto the world stage. This new primary curriculum is characterised by:
- A focus on 9 subject areas within an integrated, thematic approach
- Cross-curricular development of Literacy and Numeracy
- Infusion of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies)
- A prioritisation of Assessment for Learning
- A conscious development of Values, including HFLE
- Explicit attention to Differentiated Instruction to meet the needs of a range of students.
Curriculum documents are available for use by all. These consist of:
- Curriculum Guides in 9 subject areas:
- Agricultural Science
- English Language Arts
- Mathematics
- Physical Education
- Science
- Social Studies
- Spanish
- Values, Character and Citizenship Education and;
- Visual and Performing Arts
- Curriculum Guides for each of the year levels
- A comprehensive Teachers’ Guide
- Instructional Toolkits for each year level up to Standard 3 and a composite Toolkit for Standards 4 and 5. The toolkits contain planned Units, thematic as well as subject specific core-skills learning plans, sample activities, together with rubrics to assist teachers in the implementation of this new integrated thematic curriculum.
This Primary Curriculum has been implemented in Infants 1, Infants 2 and Standard 1 in the academic year since September 2013- July 2014. The Standards 2 to 5 will continue to work with and will be assessed using the previous curriculum documents to maintain continuity of students’ programmes of work. As the current Standard 1 moves to Standard 2 and each subsequent year, the new Curriculum will be introduced and so will be phased in to all year levels.