Parent Guides
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Starting school
Health and wellbeing
How children learn
Reading and learning at home
Take-home activity sheets
What Your Child Will Learn This Year
Ireland's primary curriculum is set by the NCCA and is organised in four stages: Stage 1 (Junior and Senior Infants), Stage 2 (1st and 2nd Class), Stage 3 (3rd and 4th Class) and Stage 4 (5th and 6th Class). It is presently mid-transition under the 2023 Primary Curriculum Framework, with the five curriculum areas being phased in over several years, so this guide is being written directly from the NCCA's published specifications and checked before it is published. It will appear here once that is done.
Start time, home time for infants, and break times.
Books, uniform days, notes, the app you use, anything specific to your school.
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A Guide for Parents
Your school name
What to Expect: Starting School
Starting school is a big step for a child and for the adults around them. This guide explains what the first weeks usually look like, so that you know what is ordinary and what is worth mentioning to your child's teacher.
The shape of a school day
Infant days are short and busy. Learning happens through talk, play, stories, songs, movement and short bursts of writing and number work. Children are not expected to sit still for long stretches, and much of the early work is about listening, taking turns and settling into a group.
In our school
Doors open at 8.50am. Infants finish at 1.30pm and all other classes at 2.30pm. Small break is at 10.40am and lunch is at 12.30pm.
What your child will be learning first
- How the class works lining up, putting a hand up, tidying away, asking for help
- Talking and listening news, stories, rhymes, describing things they have made
- Early letters and sounds, and early number through counting, sorting and matching
- Playing alongside other children, sharing and beginning to solve small fallings out
Progress at this stage is not measured in pages completed. A child who is happy coming in the door, talking about their day and joining in is doing exactly what they should be doing.
What is completely normal
- Being very tired, especially in the first month, and cross at home in the evening
- Coming home not able to say what they did all day
- A wobble at the door for a few mornings, even after a good start
- Toilet accidents, lost jumpers, and forgetting what was in the lunchbox
- Talking about one friend one week and a different friend the next
What to tell us
Please tell your child's teacher anything that helps us look after them: allergies and medical needs, how they cope with noise or change, a bereavement or upset at home, and who is allowed to collect them. Small pieces of information make a real difference to how a child's day goes.
What we ask of you at home
- An early bedtime, and a calm, unhurried start to the morning
- Name everything jumper, coat, bottle, lunchbox, hat
- Practise the coat, the zip, the shoes and opening the lunchbox at home
- Read together most days, even for five minutes
- Talk about school in an ordinary, positive way, without asking too many questions at once
Our routines
In our school
Book bags come home every Friday. Tracksuits are worn on Tuesdays and Thursdays. All notes and absences go through our school app.
17 September 2026
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