Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 24 May 2017
38. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked the Minister for Education and Skills his views on the modern languages strategy; and his further views on whether the reform of the teaching of modern languages is not being given enough priority in education policy and that his Department has no strategy for improving language skills, particularly at primary level. [24664/17]
View answerThe publication of an ambitious ten-year Foreign Language Strategy is a key commitment in my Department's Action Plan for Education and is a priority issue for me. The Strategy will include the following goals:
- Introduction of Mandarin Chinese as a Leaving Certificate curricular subject. Together with other measures, this will mean that all of our main target languages in our export strategies will now be provided as curricular Leaving Certificate subjects
- Double the number of schools offering more than two foreign languages as part of Transition Year programmes
- Measures to develop and build on the heritage language skills of immigrant communities: these include curricular specifications at Leaving Certificate, starting with Polish, Lithuanian and Portuguese, as heritage languages, with accompanying Leaving Certificate examinations. These specifications would replace the existing Leaving Certificate non-curricular examinations in these languages.
- Consideration of the development of additional Junior Cycle Short Courses for heritage languages, mindful of the fact that a short course in Polish already exists.
- The Department will work with embassies of relevant countries in delivering on these commitments.
- Exploring the possibilities of using CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) techniques by teaching aspects of the primary curriculum through Irish and foreign languages which will equip learners with transferrable language skills.
I am committed to developing a benchmark standard against which our performance in languages at all levels can be measured. This will enable us to benchmark our linguistic competence against ourselves and in comparison with other countries. This will also facilitate objective target-setting for performance in languages. To this end, we will mainstream use of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
