Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 4 July 2006
70 Mr. Crawford asked the Minister for Education and Science the main findings of the recently published report by a person (details supplied) regarding Irish language proficiency at primary level; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25790/06]
View answerThe report entitled ‘Irish in Primary schools: Long term National Trends in Achievement' by Dr John Harris provides us with useful and detailed information concerning trends in achievement levels across the three categories of schools for the period 1985 to 2002. The main findings are as follows. In relation to All-Irish Schools (Gaelscoileanna), pupil performance relating to the main listening and speaking objectives assessed has remained more or less constant from 1985 to 2002. A number of key objectives such as ‘general comprehension of speech', ‘communication' and ‘listening vocabulary' are mastered by percentages of pupils which approach or exceed 90%. A significant percentage of pupils, however, have difficulty with aspects of verb morphology. This is also a feature of similar research findings in second language teaching in other countries. They have a tendency to retain errors in interpreting or using the different tense form of verbs despite exposure to accurate linguistic models. Pupil mastery of ‘understanding the morphology of verbs' has declined from 76.1% in 1985 to 61.3% in 2002.
The success of Gaelscoileanna in achieving high standards in the teaching of Irish is not dependent in any essential way on factors related to the social background of pupils, the level of education reached by their parents or the use of Irish in the family home. The survey confirms that implementing the curriculum through a second language is a powerful way of embedding proficiency in the second language.
In relation to Gaeltacht schools, pupil performance across all learning objectives is generally high but lower than all-Irish schools. The percentages of pupils attaining mastery of ‘general comprehension of speech' is 73.3% compared to 96.3% in all-Irish schools.
Overall pupil performance in Irish speaking (but not Irish listening) has declined significantly in Gaeltacht schools since 1985. For example, the percentage of pupils achieving mastery in ‘fluency of oral description' has decreased from 86.7% in 1985 to 72.9% in 2002, a drop of almost 14% in mastery levels. This is a significant decrease in proficiency for Gaeltacht schools. Among the factors to be taken into account in interpreting standards in Irish in Gaeltacht schools is the fact that there are many pupils in these schools now whose first language is English.
In English-medium schools, pupil performance in most Irish speaking and listening objectives has fallen significantly since 1985. The percentage of pupils achieving mastery of ‘communication' in 2002 is 32.9%. In 1985, this figure was 54%. In ‘fluency of oral description' the percentage of pupils achieving mastery in 2002 is 29.9% while the corresponding percentage in 1985 was50.3%. The percentage of pupils achieving mastery in ‘control of the syntax of statements' in 2002 was 7.5% compared to 19.7% in 1985. In ‘control of the morphology of verbs', the percentage of pupils achieving mastery in 2002 is 3.7%. In 1985, this figure was 12.1%. For this category of schools, failure rates across all speaking objectives show an increase for 2002, the increases ranging from 7.4% to 16.6%.
While the Harris Report presents details of a significant decrease in Irish language proficiency in some categories of schools, I am confident that the initiatives which I have announced recently together with other curricular developments will bring about a raising of standards in Irish. The initiatives will improve the teachers' competence and confidence regarding the teaching of Irish and will cultivate a renewed focus on developing the oral competence of pupils.
