A victim of the unfair anomaly in Leaving Cert oral Irish
April 24, 2012
A PARENT WRITES:
There is an extraordinary anomaly in the marking of the new Leaving Cert Irish oral examination.
While students are examined and marked at different levels for the written exam, all students apart from foundation level are examined and marked at the same level for the oral.
This leaves my daughter in a real bind about which level to take for the Leaving Cert.
She has excellent spoken Irish and loves the language. She has been to the Gaeltacht over the years and made the most of the opportunity. She should do very well in her oral exam, now worth 40 per cent of the overall mark, but she has a reading difficulty that affects her performance in written exams, especially those with long, unseen reading-comprehension texts and essays.
Her marks for reading and written work are always quite average, but oral work is always above average.
Now she has to gamble with the extraordinary anomaly in the system. The Leaving Certificate Irish oral is a common assessment for higher and ordinary-level candidates.
The examiner should not know, and must not ask, which level the student is doing.
All higher- and lower-level students must prepare the same 20 picture sequences, the same poetry and the same range of conversation topics.
They will all be assessed in the same manner and marked with the same marking scheme, with no rebalancing or calibration of marks for the different levels.
An A1 at higher level is worth 100 CAO points. An A1 at ordinary level is worth 60 points.
It follows that the same oral is worth significantly more at higher level than at ordinary level.
At higher level it is worth 40 CAO points (40 per cent of 100 points), but at ordinary level it is only worth 24 points (40 per cent of 60 points).
This is not the case for the other languages at Leaving Certificate, as there is differentiation between higher and ordinary level at the final marking stage.
What should my daughter do? Should she continue at higher level and hope to do very well in her oral (getting the extra points this will provide even though it’s the same exam for both levels) and hope to get through the two written papers?
Or should she drop to ordinary level, where she will probably do better in her written exam but will get fewer CAO points for her strong oral performance?
Her case, I acknowledge, is individual, but there must be others caught in the same unfair situation. Surely this system is unjust for all the ordinary-level students who do the same oral exam as their higher-level counterparts but get fewer CAO points for their efforts.
Either way it’s a gamble for her as the student, but for me, as the parent, I cannot understand how this inequality and discrimination is allowed to exist in our supposedly equitable exam system.
As there is already a foundation-level oral, why is there not a higher- and an ordinary-level oral – or, at least, a different marking scheme for each level?
Ní thuigim!
This column is designed to give a voice to those within the education system wish to speak out anonymously. Contributions are welcome. Email sflynn@irishtimes.com.
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Training teachers the Catholic way
April 24, 2012
AT THE CEREMONY for his inauguration as president of Mary Immaculate College of Education, one of the largest primary-teacher training colleges in the State, the Rev Prof Michael Hayes gave a speech that had many of those present, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn included, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
A clear challenge to the increasing perception of the need for more secular education, Hayes’s speech referred to the college’s Mercy tradition as an “essential part of our identity”. He went on to say, “So if, as the president of this Catholic college, I call on us all to come to a sharper, more explicit awareness of the college’s Catholic identity, then, as a community, it will challenge all of us to look at our own preconceptions and take on the difficult work of exploring together what this college is.”
The professor mentioned children, teaching and teachers 16 times. He said the word Catholic 28 times. It caused consternation among many of those present and was seen as a pointed shot across the Minister’s bow.
Quinn has been openly critical of the strong focus on religion in Mary Immaculate’s teacher-training programme. In 2010 the college was criticised by the Teaching Council, which monitors professional standards, for spending too much time teaching religion, noting that subjects such as science, history and geography were allotted 12 hours each in contrast to the 48 hours allotted to religious education.
The appointment of Hayes was the subject of much discussion at the Department of Education in Dublin. Originally from Limerick, he was educated at St Patrick’s College, in Maynooth, and the University of London; he received his PhD from the University of Surrey. He is the editor of the international Pastoral Review journal, taught in the department of theology and religious studies at Roehampton University, in London, and was vice-principal and professor of Catholic pastoral studies at St Mary’s University College, also in London, where he is still a visiting professor.
Speaking to The Irish Times, Fr Hayes said: “Mary Immaculate is not an institution run solely by Catholics for Catholics, but the institution functions in a Catholic context”. The Catholic ethos of the college means the “starting point is that we begin with the dignity of the human person as a child of God who is called to flourish in the world’’.
Teacher education is fully denominational at undergraduate level in this country. There are four Catholic colleges (and one that caters to the Church of Ireland sector). They are publicly funded, but the Catholic Church retains control.
Mary Immaculate, for example, is managed by a board of trustees: the Most Rev Dermot Clifford, archbishop of Cashel Emly; Sr Peggy Collins, Congregration of the Sisters of Mercy (CSM); Sr Breda Coman, CSM; Sr Thomasina Finn, CSM; Richard B Haslam; Very Rev Tony Mullins, administrator of the diocese of Limerick; Most Rev William Murphy, bishop of Kerry; and Margaret O’Brien.
These trustees appoint the governing body of the college, which controls all affairs of the college, including appointments. The trustees also appoint the president of the college. Posts in two areas – religious education, and theology and religious studies – are also subject to approval by the trustees.
This is despite the fact that the college is funded through the Higher Education Authority, apart from a small additional amount of money it receives through student fees and research grants. It received €18 million from the exchequer in 2011.
St Patrick’s in Drumcondra, Dublin, the other large college of education, is managed by the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin. He entrusts the management of the college, including academic appointments, to the governing body. However, he appoints the members of the governing body and retains the right to make appointments to the religious-studies and religious-education departments. St Pat’s is largely funded by the taxpayer; it received €14 million last year. Its president, Pauric Travers, says: “We are very aware that we are a publicly funded institution. We are committed to serving the needs of all schools. We’re introducing a postgraduate certificate in ethics and education aimed at providing training for teachers working in Educate Together schools.
“We haven’t had issues, at least on an official level, with students being unhappy with the choice on offer. Of course that’s easy for me to say. But we have always supported students. Our job is to prepare teachers for Irish schools. The education landscape is changing, and we will evolve with that.”
Of the two smaller Catholic colleges, Froebel College of Education appears to have been the canniest. Next year it will move from Sion Hill, in Blackrock in south Co Dublin, to the campus at NUI Maynooth. Significantly, the move will see the Dominican Sisters, who founded and built up the college at a time of limited State resources, divest their trusteeship. It will become the first secular, publicly funded college of education in the Republic.
Coláiste Mhuire, in Marino in Dublin, on the other hand, looks more vulnerable. In January Trinity College became a cotrustee, along with the Congregation of Christian Brothers. The trustees appoint the governing body of the college. At the time of going to press, Christian Brother nominees still hold a majority on the governing board, but the new instrument of governance is expected to shift the balance of power towards Trinity College nominees.
Marino’s involvement in curriculum design for the VEC sector seems to possibly position it to train teachers for the new VEC primary community school sector. Or the college may shift its focus toward the booming Gaelscoileanna sector.
For now Marino is staying with tradition: it is the only training college in the State that has not allowed the multidenominational patronage body Educate Together to address its students about its ethics-education curriculum.
Teacher training is in flux, with the colleges adjusting to a new four year bachelor of education degree from next September.
The Hunt Report on the third-level sector may be another catalyst for change. It promotes the integration of small independent colleges with larger institutes in an effort to cut costs. At present, training a student in one of the smaller colleges is significantly more expensive.
Added to the mix is the online Hibernia College, which is training teachers at postgraduate level at no cost to the State, with none of the religious interests that currently oversee the colleges of education.
All of these factors mean that the colleges of education are engaging in a quiet jostling for position as each tries to carve out its individual niche. All of them, given the current state of affairs, know they need to justify their continued existence as individual institutions.
Some see Hayes’s speech as a signal that Mary Immaculate is willing to be the Catholic college in a segregated future for teacher education.
Student voices
Tara is a recent graduate from St Patrick’s College. She does not wish her real name to be published.
“I went to a multidenominational school. When I went into teacher training, I presumed it would be progressive, like primary education, but I was shocked at the amount of time that religious education took up on the timetable.
“The compulsory religious-education module was taught from a strong Catholic perspective. Many of the lecturers used to emphasise what ‘we as Catholics’ believe.
“It was taken for granted that everybody was a Catholic. It’s astonishing that, in order to get a job as a public servant, you have to espouse or pretend to espouse beliefs that are not your own or you endorse yourself. The cert is nominally optional, but it is strongly implied that if you don’t study it you will not get a job in a Catholic school. That’s over 90 per cent of schools.
“I ultimately decided not to pursue a career in teaching despite securing very high marks. I was worried sick that I’d get second or sixth class and have to prepare them for their Communion or Confirmation when I wasn’t raised as a Catholic and don’t have religious beliefs.”
Religious iconography is dotted around both the Mary Immaculate and St Pat’s campuses. Last year a statue of St Patrick the Teacher was erected and blessed on St Patrick’s campus following a Mass at the chapel.
Another student, currently at Mary Immaculate College has another view. “There are probably a few more crucifixes than in other places, and Mass is celebrated regularly, but very few actually attend it. If you are going to be annoyed by the mere presence of these religious tokens, yes, you will be annoyed in Mary I. But nobody, in my experience at least, has been forced to pretend they are Catholic or otherwise.
“If pressure is coming from anywhere for a student to pretend they are Catholic, it’s from primary schools themselves. People pretending to be Catholic are doing so because they know that when they graduate they will be hunting for jobs in Catholic schools.”
Patronage report
The report of the advisory group to the forum on patronage and pluralism in the primary sector made a number of recommendations in terms of teacher education.
First, it recommended that colleges provide a broadly based religious-methodology programme that prepares students to teach religion in a variety of school settings. This would not be compulsory for students with conscientious objections.
Second, it says a course focused on ethics, morality and world religions should be compulsory for all students.
To date, St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra is the only Catholic training college that has introduced an ethics-in-education module as an alternative to religious education.
But take-up is very poor. Essentially, students who take the course are unable to complete the certificate in religious education required by many Catholic schools. With more than 90 percent of schools under Catholic control, most students, with a eye to job prospects, see the ethics as irrelevant to their needs.
As of next year, however, students at St Pat’s and at Mary Immaculate College, in Limerick, will have a choice of religious education, ethics education or both.
Questions remain about who will deliver the ethics modules. Will it be the philosophy departments or the religion departments?
If I call on us all to come to a sharper, more explicit awareness of the college’s Catholic identity, then it will challenge all of us to look at our preconceptions.
Clarification sought on VEC school patronage
April 10, 2012
THE DEPARTMENT of Education is seeking “further clarification” from Galway’s vocational education committee on its patronage plans for the city’s first community primary school. This following concerns about the way parental support was canvassed.
Minister for Education and Skills Ruairí Quinn has already sanctioned a second Irish-medium primary school for one of the city’s largest suburbs, Knocknacarra, but has postponed final approval on its patronage pending the clarification, his department has confirmed.
The development comes as parents at the suburb’s only existing Irish-medium primary school, Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh, have pledged to seek a reversal of Mr Quinn’s recent decision to shelve their planned extension.
The growing suburb of Knocknacarra has two primary schools – Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh and St John the Apostle, both of which are Roman Catholic in ethos.
Four applications for patronage of a third school were submitted last year to the department – by City of Galway VEC, by the national Gaelscoileanna patron body An Foras Pátrúnachta, by the multidenominational patron Educate Together and by the Steiner national patron body Lifeways Ireland Ltd.
In its assessment, the department noted that Lifeways Ireland Ltd had not agreed to comply with all requirements, and that Educate Together had other schools in the catchment which were going to be extended – even though one of these two is over 3km away in an adjoining suburb, Newcastle, and the other is 15km away in the village of Claregalway in the north of the county.
It noted that City of Galway VEC had shown strong parental demand, while An Foras Pátrúnachta had not, but both proposed a multidenominational ethos and made the case for Irish-medium use.
However, it also recorded in its report that An Foras Pátrúnachta had raised questions about the city of Galway VEC application, as a letter seeking parental support for same had been sent out by a VEC secondary school which is due to move to Knocknacarra.
The letter sent from Coláiste na Coiribe secondary school sought expressions of interest from the proposed all-Irish City of Galway VEC primary, promising that “all students who have attended” it would have “automatic transfer rights to Coláiste na Coiribe”.
Fine Gael city councillor Pádraig Conneely, who is a member of the VEC, is seeking an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the issuing of the letter when there is already a Gaelscoil in the Knocknacarra area which is a feeder school for Coláiste na Coiribe.
Acting City of Galway VEC chief executive Tomás Mac Pháidín, who is on leave of absence from his position as principal in Coláiste na Coiribe, said that the letter was issued by the secondary school based on application addresses recorded for future years. It was not issued by the VEC, he said.
Meanwhile, Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh’s case for an extension has been supported by all five Galway West TDs, two Senators and five councillors in the Galway city west ward, while over 3,000 people have signed a petition to have Mr Quinn’s decision to postpone work overturned.
The project to provide permanent classrooms for more than 200 children in the 450-pupil school was due to go to tender, having already received planning permission and specification approval by the department. It was dropped from the department’s list last month, however.
Concern has also been expressed by local politicians that extension plans for Scoil Náisiúnta Bhríde primary school in Lackagh, and Clifden Community School in Co Galway have been shelved.
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Trilingual kids who will never be tongue-tied
April 10, 2012
You’d think speaking three languages would be confusing for kids, but don’t underestimate their ability to absorb
MY FIRST experience of trilingual children was living in Sri Lanka in 2005, where many of the kids I met spoke Tamil, Sinhala and English. I was astounded when I realised that they could also read and write in these languages, a feat requiring knowledge of three completely different scripts – the Roman alphabet, Tamil script with more than 200 letters, and Sinhalese which has more than 50 characters.
Indeed, to some of these children it appeared a language wasn’t real unless it had its own autonomous script. One young boy remained sceptical, despite my assurances, that French, Irish and English really were different languages.
Back then it never crossed my mind that one day I might have children growing up with three languages. Six years later I am blessed with two boys, Cóilín and Tarla, aged five and two, and thanks to their dad’s commitment to speak Irish to them, and the chance move to Brussels, our sons are growing up trilingually.
We’ve taken on board the standard advice for multilingual families to have a consistent communication system and to stick to one parent, one language. I converse in English with the boys and their dad, who in turn speaks English with me and Irish with the boys.
He made the decision to speak Irish when Cóilín was about nine months old, but the advice is to start from birth. Cóilín speaks English with us both, apart from a few words as Gaeilge that get inserted into an English sentence, eg “Come on, Dad, it’s time for iomrascáil [wrestling]!”
The number of Irish words he uses increases significantly when I am not around and he spends a lot of time with his dad.
Cóilín picked up French at his local playschool. Six months after he started at the age of two years nine months, we had some wobbly moments wondering whether it was all too much for him. But then, miraculously, he started speaking French and now he wonders why I am going to French classes: “What words do you want to know, Mum? I can tell you.”
For the first year or so Cóilín mixed words from all three languages, a phenomenon which is well documented among multilingual children. Gradually this stopped as he became aware of what he then called “Mummy’s language”, “Daddy’s language” and his teacher “Madame Mireille’s language”. The youngest, Tarla (2), is currently speaking a mixture of words. His vocabulary includes: man, péire (as in a pair of socks/gloves/shoes), pomme (apple) and au revoir.
Having grown up in a largely monolingual society I am amazed by my kids’ ability to absorb the languages they hear around them. But available data shows that, globally, monolinguals are in the minority. In this multicultural city many children are being raised with at least two if not three, four or five languages.
One time I was introduced to a Belgian teenager who greeted me with a choice of languages: “Français? English? Nederlands?” And I’ve met a Spanish/Lithuanian couple who converse with each other in English but speak their so-called heritage languages to their daughter, who goes to a French-speaking creche.
The advantages of being multilingual go beyond the obvious ones of being able to communicate and access different cultures. There are non-linguistic benefits too.
Sam Wang, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, says these include the ability to cope better with conflict cues; increasing so-called theory of mind, which refers to being able to understand what is going on in another person’s mind, a skill that relates to empathy; and delaying dementia.
It’s one thing growing up multilingually in Brussels but what about growing up with three languages in Ireland? Aonghus Ó hAlmhain and his German wife Ute, who live in Co Wicklow, speak Irish and German at home with their sons, Tiernán (16) and Fionn (15), and daughter Freddie (5). Aonghus grew up speaking Irish in Dublin and has been speaking as Gaeilge to his children “from before birth”.
“It would be a shocking waste not to pass on the languages we have available to us,” says Aonghus, for whom speaking different languages means “you are not stuck with one way of looking at the world”.
While he acknowledges that things have improved since he was a child, he says: “I think Anglophone Ireland has a long way to go to understand bilingualism, not to mention multilingualism. It’s very hard to find medical personnel who understand that a child can be bilingual or multilingual.
“If you suspect a speech difficulty you will at best meet a lack of understanding and at worst hostility. I know of people who have been told that really it’s their fault for not speaking English.”
In general, says Aonghus, people are curious when they realise that their kids are trilingual. “Sometimes [I get] questions about whether their English will suffer or whether I’m concerned that they will be confused.” His answer is an emphatic “no”.
Their boys, who were born in Berlin, “picked up English on the street” about a year after they moved to Ireland aged four and five. “There was no conscious input from us,” says Aonghus.
As is common, the children initially mixed languages and one of their favourite English/German/Irish anecdotes is of Freddie’s game that she loved to play by a stream aged three. “I want to schmiess [throw] clocha [stones].”
The language the children communicate in goes through phases, says Aonghus. “The kids spoke German all the time to me [except when they wanted something!] until we spent some time on Inis Oírr and they heard other children speaking Irish.”
Tiernán (16) says he is proud of his trilingualism. Apart from the obvious advantage of being able to communicate with Irish, English and German speakers in their native tongue, he says his trilingualism helps with his French and Spanish study.
Barbara Garrido from Spain and Olajide Ogidan from Nigeria, who met in Ireland, are also bringing up their children, Cynthia (8), Samuel (6) and Victor (5), with three languages. Their family languages are Spanish, English and Yoruba. Barbara speaks Spanish with the kids and says her eldest is fluent and that the youngest understands everything. When their dad, Olajide, is around, the family communicate in English, the language that they speak together as a couple.
Olajide spoke Yoruba (which he grew up with along with English) to Cynthia when she was born, but “somewhere along the line he stopped,” explains Barbara. He’s now back speaking Yoruba to the children every evening in an effort to keep their Nigerian roots alive.
Barbara says the reaction to her kids’ multilingualism has been positive and remembers someone, most likely her GP, telling her to “make sure to speak Spanish to them”.
Rory McDaid, education lecturer in Marino Institute of Education, echoes this advice: “The bottom line is encourage the use of all languages. Parents, don’t stop speaking to your kids in your own languages.”
He has come across a case where one family were told “to take out the Romanian TV. This has huge impacts in terms of family relationships and lots of international studies show the negative social consequences of prioritising English over other languages.”
He is particularly concerned that teachers and speech therapists should understand and encourage multilingualism.
For English speakers in particular, it’s easy to be lazy when it comes to learning other languages, and, as any mature student knows, it is hard work, so if your children have the opportunity to imbibe other languages when they are young my advice is take advantage of their good fortune. After all: Tús maith leath na hoibre. It will broaden their minds, expand their horizons and provide a lifetime of pleasure.
Resources
Growing up with Three Languages by Xiao-lei Wang, 2008, published by Multilingual Matters.
Comhluadar, the association for Irish-speaking families. comhluadar.ie
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Quinn questions school emphasis on Irish, religion
April 10, 2012
THE AMOUNT of class time devoted to Irish and religion in primary schools has been questioned by Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn.
He said teachers had told him how up to 30 per cent of all contact time in some primary classes was taken up by these two subjects. “If we are worried about literacy and numeracy and this figure is close to being correct … then we have to ask ourselves questions.”
In an Irish Times interview, he recalled how some educationalists had labelled Irish-language policy as the “biggest single policy failure in Irish education”.
Last year, Fine Gael proposed the abolition of compulsory Irish after Junior Cert; it later abandoned the proposal under pressure from the Irish-language lobby.
Asked if he would revive such a measure, Mr Quinn said: “I am implementing the programme for government.” (This proposes no change in Irish-language policy.) He said he had “enough fronts” open at present, including the drive for major reform of the Junior and Leaving Cert exams. Mr Quinn said he would be happy to get some of these reforms “over the line”.
He stressed his own support for religious education. “I think religion is absolutely essential if you want to understand modern civilisation. But there is a difference between teaching religion and faith formation in schools.”
Mr Quinn said he had some concerns about faith formation in the new community national schools established by the VEC.
Last week , it was revealed that the Department of Education in 2008 gave a series of commitments to Catholic Church authorities in relation to religious instruction in these schools.
He hoped this issue would be addressed in a forthcoming report from the Forum on Pluralism and Patronage in primary schools.
On the general issue of school standards, the Minister said Irish people had “talked up’’ their education system when there had always been very high levels of functional illiteracy, especially among young boys. The most recent OECD report indicated that up to 25 per cent of young males are functionally illiterate.
While the system was not as good as it was cracked up to be, Mr Quinn said the overall performance of the education sector compared well with other aspects of the public service.
“Over one million people are involved every day in full-time education … and you don’t hear about trolleys in the corridors and you don’t hear about disruption. The business gets done.”
Asked about the department’s overall management of the education system, when Ireland’s rankings were falling in both literacy and numeracy, he said: “I can’t answer for the past. What I can say is that I am encountering no resistance from within the department to my reform plans.”
Mr Quinn said his priority in office was to overhaul second-level education, which, he said, “did not encourage independent thinking”. He hoped the new Junior Cert would be implemented from 2017, with a revised Leaving Cert being rolled out shortly after.
But he stressed he would preserve the integrity of the current exam system. The public still had faith, he said, in the impartiality of the Leaving Cert and the points system. He would be very reluctant to do anything to undermine the integrity of the Leaving Cert and the points system.
On teacher underperformance he said new powers given to the Teaching Council – the regulatory group for the profession – would transform the current situation.
He wanted to abolish the notion that “parents are powerless and that they are reluctant to complain for fear that it will do damage to their children going through the system. They now have a say that they never had before.”
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No ‘big bang’ on changes to schools patronage
April 10, 2012
CHANGES IN school patronage should be implemented in a phased way with no “big bang” approach, according to the report of the Advisory Group of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in primary schools.
The report is designed to provide a roadmap for the transfer of Catholic schools to other patrons. In the first phase, it recommends 43 towns and four Dublin areas where there is likely to be substantial demand for diversity.
This will involve 18 dioceses and scrutiny of 250 schools, of which about 50 may be divested. Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has said he hopes to see 1,500 of the 3,000 Catholic primary schools divested. The report is much more cautious. It backs a three-stage process as follows:
* The department gathers information on the demand for divestment through parental surveys;
* Various school patrons provide the Department of Education with a range of options for divestment after consultations with school communities;
* The department evaluates the options and submits a report to the Minister.
For 1,700 “stand alone” rural schools – where transfer of patronage is not an option – the report says these must be as inclusive as possible and accommodate pupils of various belief systems.
Welcoming the report, Mr Quinn said: “We live in a changed and changing nation. There is a general acceptance that a greater diversity of primary schooling is necessary . . . The key issue is how best to promote and develop this diversity.”
The report notes an increasing demand for new forms of multidenominational and nondenominational schooling.
The report recommends changes to the 1965 Rules for National Schools which states religion is “the most important subject in the curriculum” and to the need for a religious spirit to “inform and vivify the whole school day”. These are considered outdated and have been the subject of much criticism, nationally and internationally.
The advisory group was chaired by Prof John Coolahan.
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Lucht na teanga ag cogaint staitisticí an daonáirimh go smior
April 4, 2012
Number of Irish speakers up by 7.1%
April 2, 2012
THE CENSUS recorded a 7.1 per cent increase in the number of self-declared Irish speakers.
Some 1.77 million people said they could speak Irish – 41.4 per cent of respondents.
More women than men answered “yes” when asked if they could speak Irish. Almost 45 per cent of women said they could speak Irish compared with almost 38 per cent of men. The Central Statistics Office noted that more women than men consistently identified themselves as being able to speak Irish.
Almost 31 per cent of 10-19-year- olds said they could not speak Irish. That increased to 36 per cent for 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds.
Of the 1.77 million who said they could speak Irish, just 1.8 per cent said they spoke it daily outside the education system.
This was an increase of 5,037 people since the previous census. A further 2.6 per cent said they spoke it weekly while 12.2 per cent spoke it within the education system.
Some 14.3 per cent said they spoke it less often – this was an increase of 27,139 and was the largest increase of all categories.
One in four said they never spoke Irish.
Of the 77,185 people who spoke Irish daily, outside the classroom, one in three lived in Gaeltacht areas.
The census recorded a 5.2 per cent increase in the Gaeltacht population. Some 96,628 people were living in Gaeltacht areas on census night 2011 compared with 91,862 in 2006.
Some 68.5 per cent of Gaeltacht dwellers said they could speak Irish and 24 per cent said they spoke it daily, outside the education system. This was an increase of 2.9 per cent on the number of daily Irish speakers in 2006. However, the number of Gaeltacht dwellers who said they spoke Irish less than weekly increased by 6.6 per cent.
The findings were welcomed by Minister of State at the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Dinny McGinley. He said the increase in the number of people able to speak Irish was a positive development in terms of the 20-year strategy for the Irish language.
“The increase in the number of daily Irish speakers in Gaeltacht areas is good news, particularly since the 20-year strategy has set a target of a 25 per cent increase in this area over its lifetime,” said Mr McGinley.
IRISH TIMES
Anger over decision to omit Gaelscoil from building list
March 16, 2012
PARENTS AND school management at a long-established Gaelscoil in Galway have condemned the Government decision to omit it from the latest school building programme.
The board of management and parents’ committee have promised a “campaign of action” to reverse the decision.
Galway West TD Brian Walsh of Fine Gael has also questioned why the Department of Education plans to build a new primary school in Knocknacarra, one of the city’s largest surburbs, while the existing nearby Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh has had its extension shelved.
Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh, an all-Irish, Catholic co-educational primary, was established in a rented house in the then developing western suburb of Knocknacarra on the Galway Gaeltacht boundary in 1993. It eventually moved into a purpose-built eight-class school in 1999. However, more than half of the 460 pupils on its roll have spent much, if not all, of their school life in prefabs, due to its rapid expansion. The school secured approval for an extension in 2009, and the Department of Education had already paid for architectural designers and quantity surveyors for the project.
When the department signalled inclusion of a third primary school for the suburb, it attracted patronage applications from Educate Together, City of Galway VEC, Lifeways Ireland Ltd and An Foras Pátrúnachta. Mr Walsh said that “under no circumstances should the development of a new school proceed until the needs of existing primary schools in the area were addressed”. He said he had contacted Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn, who had agreed that officials from his department would meet local school principals to discuss the demographic needs.
“Our 460 children, and teaching staff have patiently endured overcrowded and substandard accommodation for far too long and this unjust decision to shelve our building project at the 11th hour and without warning defies belief,” said Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh principal Dairíona Nic an Iomaire yesterday.
The department said that the five-year programme was focused on meeting demographic needs, and the Galway city area showed a requirement of 47 additional mainstream classrooms by 2017. This increase was concentrated on Knocknacarra in the west and Doughiska in the east, which was provided with a school in 2010. A new Knocknacarra school in 2013 would cater for extra demand, it said. It said the building project for Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh was at an advanced stage of architectural planning, with detailed design approval issued by it on January 10th, 2012, and it would “continue to advance this project”.
IRISH TIMES
Ag tógáil clainne
March 14, 2012
