Main parties differ on their education policies
January 28, 2011
KEY differences in education policy have emerged between Fine Gael and Labour — the next likely partners in government.
The parties are set to clash over the issue of compulsory Irish in the Leaving Certificate. Fine Gael wants Irish to be optional after the Junior Cert. But Labour leader Eamon Gilmore has backed the present position where students are obliged to study Irish up to Leaving Cert but are not compelled to sit it in the exam.
Labour’s Irish language spokesman, Brian O’Shea, confirmed that he and Mr Gilmore had told Conradh na Gaeilge, the Irish-language organisation, that they favoured maintaining the status quo in relation to Irish. The reassurance has been welcomed by Conradh general secretary Julian de Spainn. However, he has criticised Fine Gael’s policies, which have been expressed by party leader Enda Kenny, a fluent Irish speaker, on several occasions. Mr de Spainn predicted that making Irish optional would cause a dramatic decline in the number of students taking the subject.
“You could have parents telling their children in second class in primary school not to worry about the subject, because they do not have to study it at the Leaving Cert."
Irish Independent
25 Eanáir 2011
School staff ‘gobsmacked’ by phone rant from Coughlan
January 28, 2011
Education Minister Mary Coughlan took time out of her busy schedule to berate a “gobsmacked” school deputy principal in an angry phone call, made after she saw a story in the Irish Independent.
The minister’s rant — at a time when the Government teetered near collapse and a Fianna Fail leadership contest was under way — came after authorities in the Dublin school commented on delays in providing a new building. Gaelscoil Bharra in Cabra has been waiting 15 years for a new building and staff were not convinced by a sudden promise made on Monday by the minister to include it in a list of 400 school projects. Principal Sean O Donaile’s sceptical comments enraged the minister, who picked up the phone and personally rang the school early on Tuesday morning to express her anger in strong terms.
The principal was out sick and the phone was answered by deputy principal Aodh O Mairtin, who received the tongue lashing from the minister. At one stage he interrupted her to ask “are you cross?” to which she replied “yes, I’m very cross”. She then gave him her phone number and demanded that he get the principal to call her back but Mr O Donaile was unavailable to do so. A spokesman for Ms Coughlan confirmed the minister had telephoned the school. He said he was “not privy” to the conversation that took place but insisted that it was to reassure school management that they were getting a new building.
Last night the school’s treasurer Maria Temple said she was “gobsmacked” that the minister would telephone the school herself, especially “as it puts her in such a bad light”. She said it was appalling that the Gaelscoil had to wait for 15 years for a permanent building while other all-Irish schools that were only a few years old had been given new buildings. Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern visited the prefab school in 1998 and 2002 and the then Education Minister Mary Hanafin visited it in 2003. But the files for the school went missing for five years and little or no progress was made on a new building. This week it was included among projects where briefs will be formulated in the current year and the process of appointing a design team will commence.
The chair of the board of management Feargal O Cuilinn confirmed that the minister had made known that she was “disappointed with our reaction to the announcement” and he acknowledged the efforts over the past few years by department officials to secure a site for a new school. Neither the principal or deputy principal would comment last night. Mr O Donaile, had been quoted in the Irish Independent on Tuesday as saying he would not believe anything until he saw bricks and mortar to replace the school’s totally unsuitable and unhealthy prefabs. The Cabra Gaelscoil was among nearly 100 new school projects that appeared on the lists published on Monday — the other 300 are at different stages of the planning and building process.
Labour education spokesman Ruairi Quinn claimed that the announcement represented the first cynical campaign promise in an election that had not even been called yet. But a spokesman for the minister denied that the announcement was related to recent political developments and said that she had fully intended announcing her school building programme in January. Three of the school’s prefabs were flooded over the past few weeks and a small fire broke out in another one yesterday.
Irish Independent – John Walshe
28 Eanáir 2011
Fears for integrity of Irish exam as students get preview
January 21, 2011
Irish taught well in only 50pc of schools
January 13, 2011
The Government’s 20-Year Strategy for the Irish language cited research showing that Irish was taught to a good or very good standard in only half of primary schools inspected.
In one third of classrooms, Irish was taught through the medium of English. Pupils in just over half of lessons inspected were able to express themselves satisfactorily in Irish. A recent report from researchers at the University of Ulster and the University of Limerick suggests that Irish is now the language of the elite. The report found that non-speakers of Irish are twice as likely to be unemployed as Irish speakers. The report found that 42pc of Irish speakers work in senior professional, managerial or technical jobs.
Irish Independent
13 Eanáir 2011
Language activists blast FG’s plan to make Irish optional
January 12, 2011
Controversy is likely to rage over move to scrap compulsory Gaeilge after the Junior Cert
Fine Gael is set for a war with Irish language activists as it sticks by its plan to scrap compulsory Irish at the Leaving Cert. The party, which is set to lead the next Government, is committed to making Irish optional after the Junior Cert. Enda Kenny has frequently stated that compulsion has failed as the political engine to revive the language. If he presses ahead with his plan, he would be slaughtering one of the sacred cows of Irish education. Tens of thousands of students who see little value in learning Irish will welcome the move, but language activists warn that it could have a catastrophic effect.
Conradh na Gaeilge, the Irish language movement, warned that making Irish optional could cause a dramatic decline in the number of students taking the subject. Julian de Spáinn, general secretary of Conradh na Gaeilge, said the measure could de-motivate students right through the school system. “You could have parents telling their children in second class in primary school not to worry about the subject, because they do not have to study it at the Leaving Cert. That attitude could spread through an entire class.” Activists also fear that tens of thousands will give up Irish because languages are perceived to be difficult subjects. “Pupils will give up Irish at the Leaving Cert, because they will feel that they will be able to pick up more points in the Leaving Cert by doing an easier subject,” said Julian de Spáinn.
In Britain, compulsory modern languages were abolished in second-level schools in 2002 and this prompted a sharp decline in the number of pupils taking them. Participation at GCSE level, the British equivalent of the Junior Cert, plummeted from 80% to 50%. While languages declined in free schools in Britain, they continued to be compulsory in fee-paying schools. According to Conradh na Gaeilge, there is a danger that Irish could become the preserve of an elite. Making Irish optional has been Fine Gael policy for over half a decade.
Enda Kenny, himself a fluent speaker, has said that most students leave second-level without any reasonable command of the language, even though they have received about 1,500 hours of tuition. Describing compulsion as “a blunt tool”, Enda Kenny argues that those who continue with the language should share classes with students who want to be there, rather than those who wish they were somewhere else.
Although he is a passionate linguist and an enthusiastic Irish speaker, Dr Kevin Williams, senior lecturer at the Mater Dei Institute of Education, supports moves to scrap Irish after the Junior Certificate. Dr Williams said: “By all means, we should insist that young people have some experience of learning Irish. But it is misguided to insist that after the Junior Cert all young people spend a further two years studying a subject in which some have no interest or for which they show no aptitude.” In spite of the best efforts of teachers, he said reluctant learners were unlikely to derive much profit or pleasure from compulsory language subjects. ‘I have come across young people who, after 11 or 12 years of being forced to learn the language, know hardly a single word of it. Once I addressed a senior pupil by the Irish version of his name and he informed me that he had no idea of what I was talking about.”
Dr Williams said: “I heard of Irish fans in the USA in 1994 during the World Cup assuming that the broadcast in Irish of the match between Ireland and Norway was in Norwegian.” If Fine Gael abolishes compulsion at the Leaving Cert, it will be one of the most radical changes in the language’s development. A lot will hinge on Fine Gael’s likely coalition partner, Labour. Labour’s Education spokesman Ruairi Quinn was non-committal when I contacted him this week. “We have no specific proposals on the issue,” he said. Although it plans to abolish compulsory Irish at the Leaving Cert, Fine Gael supported the Government’s new strategy for the language, which was launched last month. The Government’s 20-year-plan proposed that other subjects, apart from Irish, could be taught through the medium of the language in primary schools.
To take one example, under this plan a teacher in an infants class in a primary school would teach art through Irish. Teaching extra subjects through Irish in primary school would require extra training for teachers. In recent years, the Government has focused on trying to give greater emphasis to the spoken language in schools. From 2012, students will be awarded 40% of their marks for the oral part of the Leaving Cert. Although this move has been welcomed by Irish teachers in mainstream schools, Conradh na Gaeilge has expressed concern that the syllabus has been dumbed down.
Robbie Cronin, the ASTI’s Gaeilge subject representative and teacher at Marian College in Dublin, opposes the FG plan to abolish compulsory Irish at the leaving Cert. “We should concentrate on getting the teaching of Irish right, and see how the new focus on oral Irish works, before making it optional,” he said. “It would be a terrible shame if Irish became an elitist language that is only learned by a few students at the Leaving Cert.”
Irish Independent
12 Eanáir 2011
Vow to triple our Irish speakers
December 23, 2010
Government unveils its 20-year strategy. There is a strong focus on promoting Irish in the Gaeltacht amid warnings that the language will die out there in 15 to 20 years if action is not taken.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen admitted yesterday that even €1bn in strategic funding would not be enough to get everyone in the country speaking Irish.
His comments came at the launch of the State’s first ever 20-year plan for the development of the language, which aims to triple the number of daily Irish speakers from 83,000 to 250,000 by 2030.
Mr Cowen admitted the availability of funding for the strategy — just €1.5m next year — had been affected by the economic crisis. But he said the strategy’s success would depend on the people.
“If we had €1bn, it wouldn’t give us the result that everyone is speaking Irish,” he said.
The strategy’s key points include broadening the number of Irish language speakers and improving the Irish-language training of new teachers by giving them more time in the Gaeltacht. It also backs the existing practice of keeping Irish as a compulsory school subject up to Leaving Cert level.
There is also a strong focus on promoting the use of Irish in the Gaeltacht, amid warnings that the language will die out there in 15 to 20 years if action is not taken. As part of the strategy, Gaeltacht communities will have to prepare a language plan and will lose their Gaeltacht status (and the possibility to claim Irish language grants) if they don’t.
“The greatest reason for hope is, in my opinion, the number of young people who are interested in the Irish language. My own children attended a gaelscoil and it is wonderful to see their pride in the language,” Mr Cowen said.
The 20-year strategy has cross-party support, which means that both Fine Gael and Labour are committed to implementing it if they get into power.
However, Fine Gael Gaeltacht spokesman Frank Feighan, who is learning Irish, said his party was sticking to its policy of abolishing Irish as a compulsory Leaving Cert subject.
“There are a lot of people like myself who spent 13 years in school who just have the ‘cupla focal’. We need a lot of confidence and I think this plan is the framework for 100,000 people like myself,” he said.
In Government buildings in Dublin yesterday, Community and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Pat Carey said the Irish language had survived the effects of colonisation, famine and cultural globalisation.
“For the Irish people, the language represents an unbroken chain that stretches back over 2,000 years. Today we are launching a modern plan for the Irish language in this millennium — a plan to ensure that chain will not be broken.”
Irish Independent – Michael Brennan
Irish being ‘dumbed down’ in new exam
November 22, 2010
Irish-language organisations yesterday expressed fears that a new Leaving Certificate oral Irish exam being introduced in two years’ time will lead to a ‘dumbing down’ of the subject.
The new-style oral Irish exam will allow students to earn 20pc of their total marks months in advance. From 2012, the oral test, which will last 10 to 12 minutes, will be worth 40pc of all marks for Irish, compared with the current 25pc. But half the marks for the new oral will be devoted to reciting a poem and describing a picture sequence that students can practice well ahead of the exam. Leading Irish-language organisations yesterday denounced the change in the way marks will be awarded. Although the official language of the country and a compulsory school subject, almost one in four Leaving Certificate students didn’t sit Irish this year and of those who did, only about a third took it at higher level.
The change in the marking scheme is intended to stem falling proficiency in Irish, in the hope that putting greater emphasis on the spoken word will make it more appealing. But as well as putting standards at risk at one level, it also fails to meet the needs of students with good proficiency in Irish, the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills was told yesterday. Language expert Anna Ni Ghallachoir described some of the changes as “absurd”. Ms Ni Ghallachoir, of the Language Centre at NUI, Maynooth, is also chairperson of Meitheal na Gaeilge ATAL, a group set up to support a high standard of Irish in the Leaving Certificate. She said they were not unhappy with the decision to award 40pc of marks for the oral “but when we saw what was to make up the 40pc, we were appalled”.
One task will be to recite a poem in Irish. “To say that this flies in the face of good practice is total understatement,” she said. “The notion that this part of the oral exams in the final Leaving Certificate exam is absurd.”
Ability
Students will also be required to describe a picture sequence, which will be available 18 months in advance. The norm for language testing was to provide students with such a sequence two minutes before the test, she said. Ms Ni Ghallachoir said students could get half the marks without “telling us anything about their communicative language ability”.
Muireann Ni Mhorain, chief executive of Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaiochta, which caters for the educational needs of Gaeltacht schools and of Gaelscoileanna, said that native-speaker competence would not be rewarded in the new oral exam. She said a student getting the full benefit of the 40pc of the marks for the oral component could enjoy a significant rise in points at higher level “and all in 10 minutes, with all the necessary material available years in advance”. Julian de Spainn, chief executive of Conradh na Gaeilge, said under the new Leaving Certificate curriculum, the standard of Irish required was not of the same standard required for English. He said it was important that a comprehensive curriculum of a high standard was provided to ensure that students and Irish speakers transmit the language on to the next generation.
Irish Independent – Katherine Donnelly
19 Samhain 2010
Bilingual FG
September 7, 2010
I welcome the fact that Fine Gael now has a section for primary and secondary school students on their website.
However, given that we have 169 primary and 38 second level gaelscoileanna on the island outside of the Gaeltacht, surely the party should have a bilingual website?
Darren Prior
Baile atha Cliath 15
The Irish Independent – Litir chuig an Eagarthóir
07 Meán Fómhair 2010
ESRI warns schools over ghetto risk to immigrants
September 7, 2010
A leading think-tank has warned of the dangers of increasing ghettoisation of schools in Ireland.
The ESRI says half of immigrant primary pupils are in schools with large numbers of children from overseas – where they make up more than 20pc of the student population.
In comparison, 40pc of the country’s 3,300 primary schools have no immigrants at all.
Immigrants are more likely to attend designated disadvantaged schools. The differences between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged schools can be quite stark — they imply an increasing ghettoisation of those schools designated as disadvantaged.
Immigrants are under-represented in Gaelscoileanna, mainly because of the reluctance of non-English speaking families to learn an additional new language. Higher proportions are found in urban and larger schools and in designated disadvantaged schools.
The study, entitled ‘Immigration and School Composition in Ireland’ was written by ESRI researchers Delma Byrne, Frances McGinnity, Emer Smyth and Merike Darmody and published in ‘Irish Educational Studies’.
They carried out a survey of 735 primary and 448 second-level schools. The study shows there is greater diversity of nationalities in schools here than in other European countries. Around 10pc of primary pupils — 45,700 — are immigrant, while there are 18,000 in post-primary, or 6pc. About 70pc of immigrant students are non-English speaking.
Preference
Nine out of 10 second-level schools have immigrant pupils, but many have small percentages of between 2pc and 9pc.
The ESRI says that enrolment criteria in Irish schools tend to favour settled communities, particularly where parents are required to sign up well in advance and preference is given to the siblings of those already in the school.
Much migration is relatively recent and many immigrants are very mobile. As a result, children will end up in schools that are under-subscribed. Irish parents with ‘insider’ knowledge of the educational system are more likely to successfully negotiate access to their preferred school. In contrast, immigrant parents can be ‘outsiders’ in terms of knowing how the system operates.
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) said that immigrant children were losing vital teaching support because of cuts in the number of English language teachers.
The union said that last year the Government cut nearly 500 of these teaching jobs in primary schools and predicted that a similar number could be cut this year. It said this was because of a hardline approach by the Department of Education and Skills, which had limited English language teaching to two years.
INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan said: “Two years is only enough for children to develop surface understanding of a language.
“To get to a standard where newcomer children can learn subjects like science and geography through English takes a further five to seven years.”
John Walshe Education Editor
Irish Independent
Numbers at Gaelscoileanna soar
September 3, 2010
THE number of pupils attending all-Irish primary schools in south Dublin has doubled since 2001.
But this increase has not been matched by the creation of additional places at second level, it was claimed yesterday.
“There is massive unmet demand for Irish language second-level education in South Dublin,” said Lugh O Braonain, spokesperson for the campaign to set up a new school, Bunchoiste Gaelcholaiste Dheisceart Atha Cliath.
He said a suitable building had been identified for the proposed Gaelcholaiste. The total cost of any refurbishment necessary to equip the Gaelcholaiste to the highest standard had been put at under €3m. An indication of the growing demand was shown at Colaiste Eoin in Stillorgan where parents put their children’s names down yesterday for entry in two years’ time.
Fiona Ellis
Irish Independent
