Vol. 497 No. 6
36 Mr. Perry asked the Minister for Education and Science the number of in-service training days provided to date; the value and volume of audio materials and equipment provided to date to the 250 primary schools involved in the pilot foreign language programme; and if his attention has been drawn to the serious criticism of the adequacy of the planning undertaken for this initiative. [25892/98]
Planning for the pilot project in modern languages started in late 1997. Schools were selected from over 1,000 applicants, a consultative group made up of the partners in education was set up, project leaders were appointed by advertisement and interview, an education centre was chosen to administer the project and initial training was provided for the project leaders. Teaching of the pilot project commenced in 270 primary schools on 1 September 1998. Approximately 120 of these schools teach French, 80 German, 50 Spanish and 20 Italian.
Seven project leaders have been appointed to support the project. Their tasks are to discern the in-service needs of project teachers in the areas of language proficiency and teaching methodologies and to design and implement in-service programmes to respond to those needs. They advise teachers on choice of teaching materials. They also advise school principals on the time-tabling of the project. The project leaders are constantly available to teachers at the end of a telephone or fax line.
To date, the project leaders have held 24 meetings nationwide for all those involved in the project, chairpersons of boards of management, principals, class teachers and language teachers. In addition, project leaders have made individual visits to 126 schools. By mid-January 1999, a one-day initial in-service programme will have been given in 33 venues to approximately 350 teachers. This in-service training will be held in the target language of the teachers attending and will include provision of teaching materials.
Lists of resource materials, including multimedia materials, have been sent to schools. A sum of £87,800 has been paid out in grants to participating schools for the purchase of resources. I have received many congratulatory messages on my initiative in this important project which has been broadly welcomed by schools.
Time-tabling presents a huge difficulty for teachers. Would the Minister not agree to give them time off, say two weeks, to train, because a huge number of teachers are unable to develop skills to match the computer technology now being developed in schools?
The question relates to language programmes.
I am referring to language development as well.
The feedback so far seems to suggest that schools are happy with the arrangements. I will look at the situation again in the light of the Deputy's comments. So far the feed-back from the school authorities has been positive and some very interesting work has already been done. Certain schools need more support, but that is a fact of life generally. Some schools are more pro-active than others, while some tend to wait around until the entire resource kit is provided. Some schools might have thought there would be automatic staffing supports. That is not what the project is about. It is about the development of languages within the curriculum.
The fact that the number of teachers is small relative to other in-service training programmes allows for fairly intensive work on methodology which is very important when introducing languages at an earlier age. We are keeping the matter under constant review. If there are difficulties, we will remedy them. If the Deputy has in mind a particular situation that gave rise to his question, I will be glad to meet him to discuss it.
Does the Minister not think it extraordinary that three months into the school year in-service training is only now being put in place for a project initiated in 1997? Surely it would have been logical to have all the teachers trained in advance of the commencement of the school year. Why was there such an extraordinary delay in appointing the project leaders for a start-up date in September?
Some in-service training has already taken place.
Some?
Quite a lot. I have a full list here.
No courses were held before September.
It is important that we get this right because when one rushes into a project one can make a hames of it. In terms of the recruitment of staff and project leaders one has to go through a proper procedure, there have to be public advertisements, a proper interview process and so on to get the right people to do the job. The feed-back from the schools has been very positive so far and I am reasonably satisfied with progress to date.
I hope the scheme can be expanded in the near future because it is very important. I am concerned, for example, that not enough students are studying Spanish and Italian. The number of students leaving second level education with Spanish and Italian is extremely low even though Spanish is the language of a huge proportion of the world's population.
This is a matter which should be kept under review, although I am satisfied with progress to date.
Was a cash grant recently made to the schools participating in the scheme? On what basis were the grants calculated?
The grant was related to the number of pupils and specific amounts were allocated per pupil. I can forward the details of the calculations to the Deputy. They were worked out by the project leaders with individual schools. The needs had to be determined on an individual basis, taking account of scale and other matters.
This is not an across the board cash grant but is related to effective delivery of the programme. It is not a case of setting up a pilot project and the schools rush in to get extra teachers and money. It is based on what is appropriate to the way the schools do these things. Broadly speaking, however, the amounts related to the number of pupils being catered for and a broad range of schools, in terms of size, was selected.
When one is 50 miles out at sea it is hardly the time to start learning to use a compass. The starting date for teaching young children foreign languages was September. Would the Minister agree that not providing in-service training in advance was poor planning?
It was an extremely poor performance by Deputy Bruton and his colleagues in the last Government that they did not bother to introduce a pilot programme on continental languages in primary schools. This is the first time a Government has supported and provided resources for primary schools to introduce continental languages. More must be done to achieve language competency in schools. Eventually, I hope to see the introduction of Asian languages in primary and secondary schools to achieve a truly modern competency in this area.
I hope the Minister will provide more in-service training for that.
There is more in-service training now than there ever was.
What discussions, if any, has the Minister had with the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands about using Teilifís na Gaeilge for foreign language programmes? Does he have any plans to develop such programmes?
I am in discussions with RTE on that issue. I am anxious to develop that resource for education programmes and other material for schools.
