Vol. 519 No. 5
328 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science if he will give a report on the pilot phase of the teaching of continental languages in primary education; the numbers of pupils involved; the respective languages taught; the development of appropriate curricular material; and when he plans to introduce a nation wide scheme for the inclusion of a continental language at primary level. [14147/00]
The modern languages – primary – pilot project began in September 1998, in the fifth and sixth classes of 271 schools. The pilot phase of the programme was due to end in June 2000. My Department has, however, decided to continue the pilot phase for a further year. At this stage, 287 schools are involved. Of these, 139 offer French, 72 offer German, 54 offer Spanish and 22 offer Italian.
It is not possible to definitively state at this stage the number of children who are learning a language as not all of the schools involved in the project have yet submitted returns for this school year. However on the basis of the information available to my Department at the moment there are approximately 18,000 children involved.
The curriculum for this programme was devised by the NCCA, which appointed an education officer in autumn 1998, for this purpose. It shares the same approach to the teaching of languages as the revised primary curriculum in Irish, namely, the emphasis is on a communicative approach. Extensive teaching materials have been devised and presented to project teachers by the seven project leaders who are responsible for the in-service aspect of the pilot project.
ITE – Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann – is responsible for the evaluation of the project. This organisation employed a dedicated evaluator for the project in autumn 1998. The evaluation has run in parallel with the development of the project. The first report of this evaluation will be available in late summer 2000. The future development of modern languages in primary schools will be considered following receipt of the evaluation report by the Department.
