Psychotherapist, broadcaster and former professional footballer Richie Sadlier has teamed up with Guidance Counsellor and SPHE Teacher Pam O'Leary to create an online platform to support teachers across Ireland.
By September 2027, every secondary school in the country will be required to introduce mandatory Senior Cycle Social, Personal & Health Education (SPHE), with schools expected to deliver 60 hours of structured teaching and learning across fifth and sixth years.
Department figures from 2021-2022 show that just 18% of schools were previously timetabling SPHE in fifth year, highlighting the scale of the expansion now required across Irish secondary schools.
To help ease the transition, Sadlier and O'Leary have created a subscription-based platform that will support teachers as they undergo major curriculum reform.
Let's Talk SPHE offers online lessons, multimedia learning and teacher guidance designed to support schools meeting the new Senior Cycle requirement. The platform is currently being piloted in more than 40 secondary schools nationwide.
"There's a crowded feel to a Senior Cycle timetable," Sadlier tells RTÉ Lifestyle. "In lots of schools, it's just about academic points and results, and things like PE and SPHE kind of get squeezed."
"The good thing is, it's now going to be mandatory," he adds. "I think this is a really good opportunity for us to do something really meaningful and important and useful for young people."
Research in Irish post-primary schools has found that the quality of SPHE delivery can depend heavily on teacher confidence and training, with classroom experience varying depending on who teaches the subject.
To help support and empower teachers to facilitate these important topics, the online-platform features videos of real teens discussing their own experiences, which will hopefully prompt questions, reactions, and comments from the class.
"The big focus that we've had is to have students be the main voice in the room," he explains. "You kind of move away from this notion that the adult in the room is the one that has to answer all the questions that a young person might have."
"Young people are so much more interested to hear from one another than they are from hearing answers from adults," he insists. "The reality is, if you're an adult in a room full of 16,17, 18 year olds - you're the one least informed about what life is like for them."
Sadlier has spent over a decade delivering workshops on mental health, wellbeing and relationships in schools across Ireland, alongside running a psychotherapy practice working predominantly with adolescents and their parents.
With all this in mind, he acknowledges that schools have been challenged to create space for discussions that were previously pushed aside - no mean feat, but something he insists will be worthwhile.
"This is too important for us to ignore," he states.
The rollout comes amid growing concern around stress, digital safety and emotional wellbeing, with national research showing one in four young adults reporting above-normal stress levels by age 20.
"There's an unavoidable element of confusion and overwhelm and excitement and indecision and insecurity that just comes with the territory," Sadlier says of teenage years.
In saying that, teens of 2026 have fuel added to the fire via social media algorithms and ever-evolving apps.
"The most prominent feature of young people's lives is now - which just didn't exist when I was their age - the presence of a smartphone in their pocket. The overwhelming impact of that is in all areas - they're more connected, more available, they have access to more information, but they're also navigating spaces that just didn't exist in previous generations."
"When you facilitate a conversation about their lives," he adds, "they learn way more from each other."
For school leaders, teachers or parents interested in finding out more, visit www.letstalksphe.com.
