Thank you. I was fortunate to join the Claddagh national school last year when Mr. Forde offered me a position. I was trained in the United States, but was born in Iran. Like many of our school's children, I did not speak English when I started primary school as I was an immigrant to the United States. Farsi is my first language and my second language is English. I have taught all over the world in international schools where integration is the only option. I bring a unique angle to the issue being, probably, the only ethnic minority primary teacher in Ireland. I am interested in the issue of diversity in the teaching profession also.
Committee members have been provided with a copy of my presentation. Deputy Gogarty mentioned the family school model in Australia and I would like to discuss that model. I intend to work through the presentation I provided. Mr. Forde came to me with the idea of a family model and we worked on it together. I will try and give a brief rundown without going into too much detail.
Our method is not really about teaching English, it is far more than that. If these children are to be citizens and residents, levels other than linguistic access need to be addressed, but this is not happening. We are falling between two stools. The Department of Education and Science says this issue does not fit into any of its boxes and the Minister with responsibility for integration says it has nothing to do with him per se. We started looking for funding last year and are still struggling in that regard. We are constantly trying to make appointments to meet people who can help get the project going.
Our programme, as can be seen from the cover, aims to empower families, develop communities and promote integration. That is what we are about, not about teaching participants Polish or their native language. I will give an idea of how we work. On a Saturday, children and their families arrive at the school. One of the main barriers to adults learning English and integrating is that they do not have access to child care and cannot go to English language lessons in the evenings. The entire family arrives at school on Saturdays, preschool children, school age children both primary and secondary, and adults and carers, who are often aunts, uncles, grannies, etc.
The preschool children attend a deep immersion English Montessori group on site. There they get access to English before they begin school. As multilingual specialists, we tell parents to speak their native language to their child. We want to encourage that. However, this means that when they arrive at junior infants, they have no English. Their parents should not teach them English if they are not native speakers, they should teach them their own language. The preschool children are involved in that class in the morning and stay there with the qualified Montessori teachers.
The school-age children attend two separate modules. One module is on literacy and numeracy in their native language, starting from where they are and continuing. In my case, I am fully fluent in Farsi, but I cannot even read or write my name in it. This is a severe deficit. As members can imagine, we cannot plan for these children or for whether they go back to Croatia or elsewhere for university or stay here. We must offer them a window of opportunity, particularly before the age of ten when children can develop multilingualism. It is a waste to lose that facility if they have it and not to provide the opportunity to develop it.
The second part of the programme is an ITCHH curriculum designed by ourselves which teaches Irish traditions, culture, heritage and history. On a basic level, particularly for primary school children, we are talking about not knowing what the GAA is or a hurley, or anything about sports, music and culture, which is how they integrate with friends. This is a significant issue. We generally assume a lot about what children know and what they can do, but these children do not know and cannot do these things. Often they do not play in the yard with Irish children because they do not know the latest band, know the terminology or understand the slang. We bring in outside specialists as well as our own qualified teachers to work on this ITCHH curriculum.
While that is happening with primary and secondary students, parents and carers also attend two modules. Their first module is English language support, working from their current situation with as much meaningful input as possible. It is not enough to just help them fill out job applications. If they are to live and stay here, they need to learn English. We find, particularly with EU citizens, because they do not come through the immigration system and are not asylum seekers or refugees, that they often are not provided with any English lessons. Lessons are very expensive on the open market.
The second model for adults is also an ITCHH model. Their model is modified to include things like banking in Ireland and voting rights and responsibilities. As members know, it has been suggested that non-Irish people may be able to vote in a general election. These people have little understanding about the Irish political system and these are the things citizens should know.
During the teaching of the ITCHH curriculum, specialists will help to facilitate an understanding of Irish culture in order to promote integration. Currently, we have 35 families on the waiting list for the programme. They are anxiously awaiting a position and constantly ring and ask whether the programme will be funded. There is a financial contribution required from the participating families for the running of the school. Families who do not have the funds are allowed to contribute by doing some work for us or some kind of arrangement is made for them.
This describes our programme in a nutshell. The documentation provided goes into far more detail, but I will not bore members with it. We find ours is the appropriate model. In the long term, integration will not come just from offering language support, which is what is being offered generally. The intercultural education guidelines offered by both the NCCA and the INTO are excellent, but what happens is that people like myself and Mr. Forde go to meetings on the guidelines although we already have the knowledge. Intercultural education needs to be a pre-service issue and should be mandatory. It cannot be optional. I recently held a series of talks in our school and in the Galway Education Centre on intercultural education. I do that in the evening on a relatively voluntary basis. It does not really meet the needs of teachers.