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Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 24 May 1989

Vol. 122 No. 19

Adjournment Matter. - Irish Language Assessment for Junior Certificate.

This will be entirely non-acrimonious. The Adjournment matter is the need to ensure effective arrangements in assessing the large numbers of pupils to be examined under the new junior certificate curriculum in respect of aural testing and oral competence in the Irish language.

I have raised this matter on behalf of many teachers who are my constituents. The Minister is, of course, aware that there is very general concern among teachers, the ASTI and the TUI, about the new junior certificate in general, and general concern about the likely way in which it will operate. There are complaints about the unsatisfactory in-service situation and so on. There is a genuine fear that inadequate resources may frustrate the whole purpose of what is a very exciting curriculum. Much of the dissatisfaction stems from uncertainty about what will happen. This is particularly true about the aspect of the matter which I am raising this evening, a particular aspect of a general concern.

Not only teachers but bodies like Conradh na Gaeilge and Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge are concerned in particular about how the assessment of the Irish language will be provided for. There are other matters of concern where Irish is concerned such as the long time lack of any suitable textbooks — a matter in which I was involved long ago — the lack of suitable reading material for 12 to 15-year-olds, although I understand there is now some progress on that front. That is not the immediate cause of my raising this matter on the Adjournment. It is simply that we do not know if there will be aural and oral components in the Irish examination and how unsatisfactory they will be.

There are over 70,000 junior certificate pupils to be assessed in the course of this examination. Last year, for example, approximately 56,000 students took the Intermediate Certificate Irish course and something like 11,000 students took the Group Certificate. That is a total of 66,000 and it is fair to mention a round figure of 70,000 junior certificate pupils. How will they be provided for? How is their aural understanding — their claustuiscint — and their oral competence — their cumas cainte — to be assessed? That is the nub of my question here tonight. Will this assessment be as satisfactory as that which obtains in modern continental languages? If the same standards are not going to be applied, the junior certificate will be worse than useless.

Gan mheasúnú don teanga labhartha is ar éigean go bhfuil aon chiall leis an teastas sóisearach sa Ghaeilge. Níos mó ná sin, bheadh droch-thionchar ag scrúdú scríofa gan triail chluas-tuisceana ar chleachtas múinteoireachta. Tá an sain-eolas ann cheana féin, sain-eolas ar mheasúnú den sórt atá i gceist agam anseo ar fáil ón dtaithí ar na nua theangacha, Fraincís, Spáinnis agus Gearmáinis. Tá an sain-eolas seo ag cigirí na Roinne. Ní cóir go mbeadh aon fhadhbanna riaracháin ag baint le triail chluas-tuisceana má reachtáiltear í lasitigh den scrúdú oifigiúil, is é sin ar aon raon leis na nua-theangancha.

Tá taithí ag daltaí agus lucht féitheoireachta ar seo cheana. Cuirim i gcás, anuraidh bhí triail chluas-tuisceana ag na hiarrthóirí go léir a dhein na nua-theangacha, suas le 6,000 sa teastas grúpa agus 48,000 sa mheán-teistiméireacht. Dá bhrí sin, sa ghné sin den mheasúnú, is é sin sna nua-theangacha, tá gach rud i gceart agus nílimid ach ag iarraidh go mbeidh na caighdeáin chéanna i gceist sa Ghaeilge. Níl aon tír eile, go bhfios dúinn, in a nglactar le scrúdú scíofa amháin gan triail chluas-tuisceana agus triail chainte a bheith ag gabháil leis. Agus ní heol go mbeidh rud mar seo costasach ach chomh beag. Is é an t-eolas atá agamsa ná nach mbeadh i gceist ach costas de £10,000 nó mar sin.

What I am pleading for, essentially, is that we apply the same standards to Irish as we do to continental languages. I welcome in one way that there is an awareness of Irish as one of the lesser used languages of the Community but the danger of that is that it will be seen as some kind of optional, marginal, freak language that does not have to be taken seriously. We should demand a major role for Irish so that in the end, perhaps, it will get a reasonable treatment. I am speaking here not alone about an educational necessity — that we should apply the best assessment and expertise to Irish — but we should also be positive in the context of 1992 about the cultural contribution we can make to our European partners. What we can give them most distinctively is the Irish language.

There is another development taking place at the moment which gives my rather narrow question a greater general relevance. I think there is evidence of a growing popular appreciation of Irish in the lives of our people. If I may say so, in spite of the efforts of the State over the decades the Irish language will not die. What has happened in the past ten years or so, as is evidenced in the Gaelscoileanna particularly in the naí-scoileanna is that people are appreciating the language not as a badge of fanatical nationalism, as the terrorists would have us regard it, but as an enrichment of their lives and of their individual and national personality. I see that development, the European context and the junior certificate all coming together, as it were. That is why it is so important that the Irish language should not be short-changes in the junior certificate curriculum.

May I first congratulate the Cathaoirleach and the Seantors on their newly refurbished building. I had not seen it before and it is absolutely magnificient and, indeed, no more than all of you deserve. In the context of the times in which we are living, I hope all of you will be back in the Seanad again now that you have had the pleasure of returning to this lovely Chamber.

I thank Senator Murphy for raising this matter on the Adjournment. I am pleased he has done so because one of my cribs has been the lack of general debate about the whole issue of the junior certificate and I am very glad it has been brought up here in the Chamber.

I will, first of all, speak in general because the debate was started in the general context of the junior certificate. I have met with the unions on several occasions about the matter and I am about to meet with the JMB and with the managerial body of the vocational sector. I addressed all of the conferences at Easter. I have within the past two weeks been informed by both unions that the arrangement we have now made for the in-service courses, the increased provision by over 200 per cent, the new layout of the in-service courses beginning in September of one day each term, and the type of courses, are entirely acceptable to them and they have accepted now the revised in-service arrangements. I am very pleased about that. There are other matters on which they seek advice and seek counsel with me and we are pursuing those.

Because reference was made to in-service, I would like the House to know we have reached an amicable agreements on that. There remain other matters of concern which we will have to address in the overall context of the junior certificate.

I would like to thank the Senator for the very obvious enthusiasm for changes in the curriculaum which he has expressed here this evening. I have met with some of the bodies involved in the Irish language, as mentioned by him, and they remain most enthusiastic about the whole junior certificate in Irish. The teachers of Irish have expressed enthusiasm for it. They say it opens up the course, it makes it more attractive to young children and makes it more attractive for them to teach. All of that is necessary if we are to change.

I will address the precise question which has been raised here in the Seanad, the need for the Minister for Education to ensure effective arrangements in assessing the large numbers of pupils to be examined under the new junior certificate curriculum in respect of aural testing and oral competence in the Irish language. The numbers, I am sure, would be within the range the Senator spoke of, at least from 65,000 on, who would, le cúnamh Dé, be sitting the exam in June of 1992.

When I circulated the new junior certificate syllabus in Irish on 20 September 1988 to the schools, I advised the school authorities at that time that the aural and the oral tests in Irish would be introduced on a phased basis. When I went to Killarney at Easter to meet the ASTI and on to Kilkenny to meet the TUI I indicated that it was my intention to advance the oral components in all languages, including Irish.

The Senator spoke about how Spanish, German and Italian were all now being enthusiastically taken up and that the Irish should not be left behind in the general competency with which the oral component was being addressed in those languages. It is still my intention to pursue this objective with regard to junior certificate Irish.

The provision of aural and oral tests in Irish at this level must be approached carefully because of the consequent implications for the assessment of all other languages in the junior certificate programme and because of the need, of course, to take account of the different dialects. For those reasons I have now asked the inspectors of Irish in my Department and the officials in the Examinations Branch in Athlone to examine the feasibility of having an aural test in junior certificate Irish from 1992 onwards. I am now awaiting the result of their investigations and then we will be making the final plans in this regard.

In making provision for aural and later oral tests in junior certificate Irish, my Department will be able to draw upon the extensive experience which it has now acquired in providing aural and oral tests in modern continental languages at both Intermediate and Leaving Certificate levels since 1985 and in providing oral tests in Irish at Leaving Certificate level since 1960. I very much take what Senator Murphy has said, if the new junior certificate Irish — and that is what we are talking about here — is to have relevance and meaning, the whole thrust and scope of the new syllabus is to encourage people to like Irish. I take the Senator's point that there is now a broad feeling that Irish can to a greater extent be taken up by people. If we are to follow through the thrust of the syllabus in junior Irish it will need the aural and the oral competency; otherwise the thrust of it will be lost because the end result will not be experienced by the students when they do that part of their examination. That is what we want, to make the Irish meaningful.

Certainly against the backdrop of 1992 and the insistence now — correctly so — by the children and parents on the need for more languages, I am very glad that Irish has now been accepted by the European Parliamentary Commission and adopted in the Lingua Programme last Monday as being one of the "minority" languages. It is up to us now to build up on that, having got that recognition, acceptance and inclusion under the Lingua Programme. That was a fair step and we were pleased with it.

It will be very important when we are committed to the European ideal that we also remain committed to the fact that we are first Irish and then European, and that being European does not take one jot from being Irish as well. Part of that will be our Irish language. It sounds simplistic but it will become more important rather than less important, as we become, in every sense of the word, full citizens of Europe.

It is my intention and the intention of the Department of Education that, as written on the syllabus that went out in September, as taken up by me at the teacher conferences, and now in my later consultations with the unions and other bodies, that the aural and the oral components of Irish will be advances on a phased basis in the new junior certificate. I would expect that commitment would follow through in whatever changed circumstances might arise within the Department or the Minister in charge.

I want to thank Senator Murphy for his very obvious concern and for the fact that the only debate on this matter was in this House, despite all the media publicity about the junior certificate. I was glad to come to the House and to put that commitment on record. I thank you, a Chathaoirligh, and Senator Murphy.

I appreciate the Minister's reply and I am very pleased with it. May I reciprocate the good wishes she expressed for the safe and speedy return of all of us to this fine chamber.

The Seanad adjourned at 6.40 p.m. until 12 noon on Wednesday, 31 May 1989.

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