Am Bratach No. 199
May 2008
editor@bratach.co.uk

Skye parents aim for Gaelic school

A public meeting will discuss the establishment of a Gaelic-medium school in Portree on the Isle of Skye next week. ARTHUR CORMACK provides the background.

Ninety-nine children currently attend Gaelic-medium in Portree, while 136 attend the “mainstream” school. A few years back there was almost an equal proportion of children in Gaelic and in English at Portree, but the Gaelic numbers have dropped off, mainly because parents are not being made aware of the benefits of bilingualism.

The Highland Council was asked by Bòrd na Gàidhlig under the terms of the 2005 Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act, to develop a Gaelic Language Plan, and within that there is a pledge to establish two Gaelic schools within the lifetime of the council’s plan, by 2011. So there is an opportunity at present to advance an argument.

Numbers of pupils in Gaelic-medium education throughout Scotland in recent years have been at best static, and at worst, in decline. In Scotland there are just over 2,100 pupils in Gaelic-medium primary schools. The only real growth has been seen in Glasgow which, until last year, accounted for almost the entire increase nationally in Gaelic-medium pupils. In the city, there has been a dedicated Gaelic school for a number of years, which recently moved to a new campus offering primary and secondary education entirely in Gaelic. The school has an expected intake of seventy-six pupils going into Primary 1 in August this year, which is quite remarkable.

If we are to slow the decline in the number of Gaelic speakers, and begin to reverse it, one expert has said that we need a seven-fold increase in the numbers of children entering Gaelic-medium education, just to replace the Gaelic speakers who are dying each year. That is a frightening number. The Scottish Government, through its approval of the National Plan for Gaelic, has a target of increasing the number of pupils in Gaelic-medium primary education to 4,000 at P1 stage by 2021. That is a ten-fold increase over the next thirteen years and will mean, in practice, an 18% year-on-year increase in the numbers of children entering Gaelic-medium education. This may seem a tall order, but creating Gaelic-only schools in Portree, and elsewhere, would help achieve that target. Incidentally, last year there was a 23% increase but, Glasgow accounted for most of that.

Most people on the outside looking in believe that children currently taught in what are described as Gaelic-medium schools, are done so entirely through Gaelic from P1 to P7, and such schools are therefore often described as being bilingual. The reality is that from P3 onwards our children learn to read, and do some of their other work, in English. Visiting specialists invariably offer their classes in English too, so easily up to 50% of the curriculum in any Gaelic-medium school as we know it may be delivered in English. In a school with a Gaelic department the default language of the whole school is always, without exception, English. Therefore, Gaelic is only used for certain in the classroom, and only for part of the time. Gaelic schools should produce speakers who are more fluent and, if the experience in Glasgow and Inverness is replicated and pupil numbers increase, many more of them, building up the critical mass needed to achieve the National Plan target.

For details of the meeting, turn to our What’s On Diary.