1st Year Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) 2023 – 2024
Junior Cycle Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) is a 100 hour short course. The course is designed to support schools in providing the required 100 hours of learning in SPHE which is a minimum requirement for all junior cycle short courses.
The short course was updated in 2023, so 1st years students will be studying the 2023 specification. Click here to read the specification.
Aim
This course aims to build students’ self-awareness and positive self-worth; to develop the knowledge, understanding, skills, dispositions and values that will support them to lead fulfilling and healthy lives; empower them to create, nurture and maintain respectful and loving relationships with self and others; and enhance their capacity to contribute positively to society.
There are four strands in the curriculum for 1st year SPHE, and they are underpinned by three cross-cutting elements that are foundational for effective teaching and learning in SPHE. These are:
1. Awareness
2. Dialogue
3. Reflection and action
Strand 1: Understanding myself and others
This strand focuses on developing self-awareness and self-esteem and building some of the foundational skills and dispositions needed for healthy relationships and to thrive in life, including communicating and negotiating, listening, showing empathy, respecting difference, and self-management/self-regulation.
This strand will be divided in the following topics:
- Unit 1: Moving up
- Unit 2: Self-management
- Unit 3: Becoming independent
- Unit 4: Having a friend and being a friend
- Unit 5: Respectful communication
- Unit 6: All different, all equal
- Unit 7: Being an adolescent
Strand 2: Making healthy choices
This strand offers opportunities for students to consider how they can make healthy choices to support their wellbeing. It explores what being healthy might look like for a teenager, what helps or gets in the way of making healthy choices and how to access reliable information to support good choices. Students will also practice the skills needed for making healthy decisions and come to understand contextual factors, such as family, peer, media and social pressures, that influence decisions.
This strand will be divided in the following topics:
- Unit 1: Being healthy
- Unit 2: Unhealthy products
Strand 3: Relationship and sexuality
This strand explores the cognitive, physical, emotional and social aspects of relationships and sexuality through a positive, inclusive, rights and responsibilities-based approach. The focus is on family relationships, friendships, romantic and potential sexual relationships in the future.
This strand will be divided in the following topics:
- Unit 1: Healthy and unhealthy relationships
- Unit 2: Sexual orientation and gender identity
- Unit 3: From puberty to parenthood
Strand 4: Emotional wellbeing
This strand primarily focuses on nurturing emotional wellbeing and promoting positive mental health. It helps students develop problem solving and coping skills for dealing with the emotional ups and downs of life, explores how they can support themselves and others in challenging times and discusses where/how to find support, if needed.
This strand will be divided in the following topics:
- Unit 1: Exploring emotional wellbeing
- Unit 2: Anti-bullying
- Unit 3: Self-care