Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 31 Jan 1990

Vol. 395 No. 1

Written Answers. - Foreign Language Teaching.

Séamus Pattison

Question:

162 Mr. Pattison asked the Minister for Education the number of schools offering each of the following modern languages: (a) Spanish, (b) Italian and (c) German; and the number of students taking each of those languages (i) in the junior cycle and (ii) in the senior cycle.

Minister for Education (Mrs. O'Rourke)

The information required by the Deputy is given in tabular form as follows:

	Number of Schools Providing the Stated Subject at Junior Cycle	Number of Schools Providing the Stated Subject to Leaving Certificate
German	233	(233)	178	(159)
Spanish	77	(73)	85	(71)
Italian	6	(4)	13	(3)
Total Number of Schools Providing Junior Cycle Leaving Certificate	800		780
	Number of Pupils Taking the Stated Subject at Junior Cycle	Number of Pupils Taking the Stated Subject to Leaving Certificate
German	22,055		5,341
Spanish	5,389		1,948
Italian	67		73
Total Number of Pupils enrolled in Junior Cycle Leaving Certificate Courses	207,992		108,344

Note: The above data refer to the 1987-88 academic year. Data in brackets are exclusive of schools who returned themselves on the annual statistical return as providing a language to two pupils or less. In a number of such cases, the language may be provided in association with the school, e.g., by one of the school's teachers outside of normal school hours, rather than by the school within the normal meaning of that phrase. It would also appear that, in some cases where schools returned themselves as providing a language to a small number of pupils, the pupils concerned were studying the language privately outside the school system.