Aistear 2024: What Changed in Ireland’s Updated Early Childhood Curriculum Framework

Aistear is Ireland’s early childhood curriculum framework, and it was updated for the first time since 2009. The updated framework was published in December 2024 and took effect in September 2025. If your curriculum policy cites the 2009 framework, twelve principles, or the Guidelines for Good Practice, it is describing the previous version.

This guide sets out the current structure and what changed.

What Aistear is

The full title of the current version is Aistear: the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework for babies, toddlers and young children, published by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. Aistear means journey.

Its scope is all children from birth to six years, in all settings other than primary and special schools. It is usable by parents, childminders and early years educators, who are referred to collectively as educators in the 2024 text.

It is a curriculum framework rather than a curriculum. It sets out a vision, principles, themes, aims and broad learning goals rather than prescribing content — a distinction the NCCA itself draws, and one that matters when a setting is asked to show how it plans.

The timeline

Aistear was originally published in 2009. The review that produced the update ran in two phases: consultation from May 2021 to April 2022, then proposals published in September 2023 followed by a further consultation to November 2023. The NCCA described it as not a major review — the structure was retained and the sections updated.

The updated framework was published in December 2024, with an NCCA announcement on 9 December 2024 and a joint government press release on 5 December 2024. It took effect in September 2025, with the following twelve months focused on dissemination and professional development, supported by Better Start and the City and County Childcare Committees.

The companion document was renamed in the process: the 2009 Guidelines for Good Practice became the 2024 Guidance for Good Practice.

The four themes — unchanged

The four themes survived the review intact: well-being; identity and belonging; communicating; and exploring and thinking.

What changed underneath them is the structure of aims and goals. In the 2024 version each theme has four aims, and each aim has three learning goals — twelve learning goals per theme, and 48 in total. That is a substantial simplification from the 2009 structure, which carried considerably more goals.

Nine principles, down from twelve

The 2009 framework had twelve principles. The 2024 version has nine, and the NCCA states the reduction explicitly. The nine principles of early learning and development are:

• Agentic global citizens
• Relationships and interactions
• Diversity, equity and inclusion
• Family and community
• Agentic educators
• Holistic learning and development
• Transitions
• Play and hands-on experiences
• Learning environments

Two NCCA documents give these nine names in slightly different orders, so treat the set as settled and the numbering as not — if you need to cite a numbered principle, take the order from the framework itself.

The word "agentic" appears twice, and that is deliberate. The most substantive change in the 2024 version is an increased emphasis on children’s rights and their agency over their own learning, alongside added emphasis on sustainability, on diversity, equity and inclusion, on relationships and friendships, and on the Irish language and culture. A Vision section was added.

What the themes actually cover

Each theme is broad by design, and a setting that reads only the theme titles will under-use the framework.

Well-being covers physical and psychological health, resilience, and the sense of competence that lets a child attempt something difficult. Identity and belonging covers how a child sees themselves, their family and their community, and includes the cultural and linguistic dimension that the 2024 revision strengthened. Communicating covers far more than speech — non-verbal communication, early literacy, and the use of multiple languages. Exploring and thinking covers curiosity, problem-solving and the beginnings of scientific and mathematical reasoning.

The aims within each theme are written as broad statements, and the three learning goals under each aim are what a practitioner plans towards. That three-level structure — theme, aim, goal — is the thing to internalise, because planning documents that jump straight from a theme to an activity skip the layer where the framework does its work.

Why the 2024 changes matter in practice

The reduction from twelve principles to nine is not simply tidying. Several of the 2009 principles were merged into broader statements, and two new framings were introduced that change what good practice looks like.

The first is agency. Treating children as agentic global citizens, and educators as agentic educators, means the framework now expects children to influence what happens in the setting and expects educators to exercise judgement rather than follow a scheme. Evidencing that requires records of what children asked for or chose and what the setting did about it — the kind of documentation that cannot be produced retrospectively.

The second is the explicit treatment of diversity, equity and inclusion as a principle in its own right, alongside sustainability and the Irish language and culture as strengthened emphases. For a setting, that tends to show up in resource choices, in how the day is structured, and in how families are involved, rather than in a policy document.

Transitions also became a principle. That covers moving within a setting, moving between settings, and the move to primary school — which is where the alignment with the Primary Curriculum Framework is intended to do its work.

Where Aistear now sits relative to primary school

This is the change most likely to affect practice in schools. Aistear is aligned with the Primary Curriculum Framework published by the Department of Education in 2023, which covers primary and special schools, and the alignment is designed to support continuity and progression at the point of transition. Both emphasise a pedagogy of play.

But the 2024 foreword notes that the updated Aistear is no longer designed specifically for junior and senior infant classes — a change from 2009, when it was. Its pedagogical approaches remain relevant there, but the framework is no longer written with those classes as a target audience. Infant classes work to the Primary Curriculum Framework.

Aistear and Síolta together

The two frameworks are complementary, not alternatives. The NCCA states there is continued alignment and synergy between them, and the Aistear Síolta Practice Guide exists to support educators using both.

The division of labour is straightforward: Aistear is the curriculum framework, concerned with what and how children learn, while Síolta is the quality framework, concerned with practice and process. Both inspection regimes — Tusla’s regulatory inspections and the Department of Education’s education-focused inspections — are built on both, together with the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Charter.

ECCE-funded settings are required to deliver a programme following Síolta and Aistear, and the registration and funding architecture around that is covered in our guide to Tusla early years registration and inspection.

What it asks of educators

Aistear attaches no qualification requirement of its own — the qualification floor in Ireland comes from Regulation 9 of the 2016 Regulations, which sets a Level 5 major award for employees working directly with children.

What it does require is a particular kind of professional practice, and the agentic educator principle is the clearest statement of it: educators are expected to exercise professional judgement rather than deliver a prescribed programme. In practice that places weight on planning, observation, documentation of children’s learning, and reflective practice — which is why the implementation period was built around professional development rather than a compliance deadline.

For settings using a specific pedagogical approach within the framework, the relationship is the same as it is in England: the approach is a way of delivering the framework, not an alternative to it. Our guide to Montessori and the EYFS makes the equivalent point for the English framework.

Frequently asked questions

Which version of Aistear is current?

The version published in December 2024, which took effect in September 2025.

What are the four themes?

Well-being; identity and belonging; communicating; and exploring and thinking — unchanged from 2009.

How many learning goals are there?

Forty-eight: four aims per theme, three learning goals per aim, across four themes.

How many principles?

Nine, reduced from twelve in the 2009 framework.

Does Aistear apply to junior and senior infants?

Not as a target audience any more. The 2024 framework is no longer designed specifically for those classes, which work to the Primary Curriculum Framework, though Aistear’s pedagogical approaches remain relevant.

Is Aistear statutory?

We could not find a primary source stating either way. In practice it is required of ECCE-funded settings and is built into both inspection frameworks. That is not the same as being statutory, so do not describe it as such without a source.

Implementation and training

The practical question for a setting is not whether it has read the framework but whether its planning, observation and documentation reflect the nine principles — particularly agency, transitions and inclusion, which are where the 2024 changes land hardest.

Alongside curriculum practice sit the statutory obligations that do not change: child protection under Children First, covered in our guide to Children First training, and the wider safeguarding content in our guides to safeguarding children and designated safeguarding lead training. To see what Learnsignal offers for the compliance side, explore our CPD courses or see pricing for teams.