Hundreds of students, teachers and parents gathered outside Leinster House on Wednesday to call for a comprehensive policy for the Irish language in the education system.
Organised by the campaign group Gaeilge4all, protesters heard calls for Minister for Education Norma Foley to develop a policy that would include all levels of learning from early childhood to third-level to ensure a “satisfactory learning experience” for every pupil in the education system.
Organisers said the Minister should establish an expert working committee comprising members who have an understanding and experience of Irish in the education system.
Shane Ó Coinn, spokesman of teacher group An Gréasán do Mhúinteoirí Gaeilge, who spoke at the demonstration, said there is a “myriad of problems” in the system.
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He said teachers, parents and students were “very concerned” at what was being proposed for the Leaving Certificate.
“The proposal to move [Leaving Certificate] paper one to fifth year didn’t make any sense educationally and would hinder students’ ability to acquire the language,” he said. “That has been now postponed and we hope that it won’t come back as it is educationally unsound.
“The biggest problem is that there is no overarching comprehensive policy for Irish in the education system. All these problems arise but there is no proper planning, there is no direction. We are jumping from crisis to crisis. We have to do something about this. We have to resolve these problems,” he said.
Those in attendance included politicians, representatives from the teacher unions, Irish-language organisations and student groups.
Paula Melvin, uachtarán of Conradh na Gaeilge, said the education system is “broken” when it comes to the Irish language.
“One hundred years on from the foundation of the State there still isn’t a comprehensive plan for the teaching of Irish from playschool right up to PhD level. There are 40,000 students who have an exemption from Irish at secondary school level but despite this there is no plan or resources available for them. They are blocked out of the Irish language. No other country has an exemption system the way we do,” she said.
“There are so many problems. We really want Norma Foley to listen to us and to stop causing damage to the Irish language.
“How can we teach Irish to children from as young as four years of age up to 18 years of age and have no comprehensive plan and no strategy? It’s the blind leading the blind – it makes no sense whatsoever. It’s truly shocking.
“This is the reason why people study Irish for eight years at primary school level and five or six years at secondary level and still don’t achieve fluency. We need to do better,” she said.
Professor Pádraig Ó Duibhir, director of Sealbhú, the DCU research centre for the learning and teaching of Irish, said the introduction of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which is an international standard for describing language ability, would be “very important”.
“We would know what to expect from the amount of time and resources we invest in the teaching of Irish. We have reduced the amount of time devoted to Irish at primary level from five hours in the 1971 curriculum to 3 1/2 hours in the 1999 curriculum and now three hours. I don’t think we have adjusted our expectations or what happens at the start of second-level,” he said.
“Secondary teachers are now reporting that children are coming in from primary school without the skills they need,” he said.
Aoife Ní Ghloinn, director, Lárionad na Gaeilge, Ollscoil Mhá Nuad, who also attended, said there are “two main weaknesses” in the system at the moment.
“One of those is a lack of continuity from level to level within the system. The second is a lack of continuity between what happens in the classroom and what happens in the assessments and then the kind of skills that students need to be able to use Irish in the real world, in their personal, professional and social lives after school.”
“It is essential that there is one comprehensive unified vision to bring students from early education and preschool to third-level and on to teacher education,” she said.
“There is a need for joined-up vision [that would incorporate] what we are trying to achieve within the education system at each level, in order to ensure that progress is made as students move on from one level to the next,” she said
