Key Skills

What skills do learners need to prepare them for life, learning and work in the 21st century? Things have changed in the world in recent years and continue to change every day. As well as learning knowledge, learners need to develop skills to create new knowledge and to deal with and navigate their way through this new world. There are five skills identified as central to teaching and learning across the curriculum at senior cycle. These are critical and creative thinking, communicating, information processing, being personally effective and working with others.

These skills are important for all learners to achieve their full potential, both during their time in school and into the future. They enable learners to participate fully in society, to engage in happy family lives, to prepare for working lives that are likely to change constantly and to engage with and enjoy learning throughout their lifetime.

As learners develop competence in each of the five skills in an integrated way they also develop competence in learning how to learn.In order that learners benefit from their interaction with the key skills, it is important that they would encounter them frequently and in an integrated way right across the curriculum.

Learners reflect on key skills in the classroom

Learners talk about key skills

Leading key skills: a whole school approach

Leading key skills

View more key skills videos here

Key skills framework

NCCA has developed a key skills framework in which each key skill is broken down into essential elements and learning outcomes. The elements further describe the skill that learners will develop. The learning outcomes indicate what learners should be able to to do as a result of developing this element of the key skill.

View the key skills framework

View key skills learning outcomes

Key skills in schools

Since September 2006, teachers and learners from a network of schools have been reflecting on how key skills are embedded within their teaching in English, Irish, French, Spanish, Mathematics, Biology and other subjects. To assist in this work teachers used reflection templates. They have also developed learning activities for key skills teaching that they have shared with us. These activities along with support material is available on www.action.ncca.ie. Some of the schools involved in the key skills initiative are exploring the development of key skills across all subjects in junior and senior cycle.

Getting started with key skills

Watch some presentations on key skills, view more videos of teachers and students talking about their expereince with the skills and use some of the learning activities and tools here.