Northern Ireland

Curricula for pre-school and school aged children includes aims that are intended to address children’s health.

The curricular Guidance for Pre-school Education (Council for the Curriculum, Examination and Assessment) includes a focus on wellbeing. The document states that the focus should be that children are enabled to learn at their own pace, to have a breadth of learning experiences and gain a positive image of themselves as resilient learners able to cope with uncertainty, and to learn through trial and error.

The aims of the pre-school curriculum are to:

• promote emotional, social, physical, creative and intellectual development.
• develop self-esteem, self-control and positive attitudes towards others
• develop language and communication skills to encourage the sharing of thoughts and feelings
• create confident, eager, enthusiastic, independent, curious learners with a positive and problem-solving attitude to learning.

In the Foundation Stage, which is the curriculum for school aged children, the aims for wellbeing state that it will provide a learning programme which will:

• promote children’s personal development
• promote positive attitudes and dispositions to learning
• promote children’s thinking skills and personal capabilities
• encourage creativity and imagination
• enable children to develop physical confidence and competence
• develop children’s curiosity and interest in the world around them
• enable children to communicate in a variety of ways
• motivate children to develop literacy and numeracy skills in meaningful contexts.