Gaelscoileanna: must teach 30 minutes of English per day
Until now, at least some Gaelscoileanna (primay schools that teach through the medium of Irish) have adopted a “total immersion” approach. Students are not taught any English for the first two years of school.
They argue that this lies in with international best practice for teaching a language.
Mary Hanafin, the Minister for Education, has now said that all children must be taught 30 minutes of English a day from the second half of their first year of school onwards.
Source: RTÉ
Braoin said,
August 5, 2007 @ 1:24 am
Are children going to be taught 30 minutes of Irish every day in the English speaking schools from the second half of their first year of school onwards, since this is a suggested requirement for Gaelscoileanna?
The children will reject the Irish if the teacher mixes English and Irish. I expect that in a few years the level of Irish in Gaelscoileanna will be no better than that of English speaking schools and that in time Gaelscoileanna will be seen as an unnecessary waste of resources and extra work on teachers. If this suggestion goes through, I believe that Gaelscoileanna will fail in their objective of creating Irish speaking children in predominantly English speaking environments, and will be downgraded and phased out. The future of Irish will then depend on the current curriculum and English language teaching methods and on that point I will finish my comment.