Vol. 514 No. 1
228 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science the plans, if any, he has to give refresher courses in Spanish to teachers who have studied Spanish in the past and are not now actively teaching the subject in view of the need to promote Spanish as one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. [3622/00]
229 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science the steps, if any, he will take to ensure that there will be post-primary schools offering Spanish in all of the catchment areas of primary schools where the teaching of Spanish has recently been initiated as part of the promotion of that language. [3623/00]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 228 and 229 together.
The recent £4.5 million initiative to extend the teaching in second level schools of Spanish, Italian and Japanese will use a number of approaches. One of these will be to encourage schools which do not teach any of these languages at present to do so. Another will be to identify teachers in the category mentioned by the Deputy and to put in place the in-service provision needed to make them competent and confident in the use of the language they will teach.
In the case of Spanish, much of this work of identifying dormant capacity for the teaching of the language has already been done as part of a feasibility study carried out in the summer of 1999. The results of this study give me confidence that there are a number of teachers, and of graduates in Spanish who are not currently teaching, who will be eligible for inclusion in this initiative.
My Department will place advertisements in the national press in the very near future seeking applicants for the post of national co-ordinator of this initiative, and inviting applications from teachers who once studied Spanish, Italian or Japanese but would now require inservice support to be able to teach one of them.
Spanish is currently being taught in 53 primary schools. One of the criteria used in choosing these schools was that continuity of study of Spanish could be assured at post-primary level. One of the tasks of the national co-ordinator of the post-primary initiative will be to make contact with the project leader for Spanish at primary level to ensure that this continuity is facilitated.
An advertisement will shortly appear in the national press inviting applications from primary schools where there is a teacher who would teach Spanish or Italian in this context, given the necessary training. My Department will provide this training for suitable teachers in primary schools who reply to this advertisement. This advertisement, and that for the co-ordinator of the post-primary initiative, will make explicit reference to the need to create links between what is happening in the area of the lesser taught languages across the two sectors.
