Few schools teach through Irish

Only a minority of Gaeltacht schools teaching through Irish

Anton McNulty

ONLY eight national schools in the Mayo Gaeltacht are educating their pupils entirely through Irish and support is not being given by the Department for Education to secondary schools who wish to teach through Irish.
The figures on the nationals schools were revealed by Art Ó Súilleabháin, Director of the Mayo Education Centre, who was speaking at last week’s conference on the status of the Mayo Gaeltachtaí. The day-long conference, which was held in the National Museum of Country Life, looked at the current status of the Mayo Gaeltachtaí and was chaired by Máirtín Mac Donnchadha of Raidió na Gaeltachta.
Mr Ó Súilleabháin said that the Gaeltacht national schools teaching their pupils through Irish reflected where the Gaeltacht is still strong in the county. He said that of the 25 national schools in Gaeltacht areas, only three of the 15 schools in Erris were teaching entirely through Irish, none of the five Achill schools were teaching through Irish and five of the six schools in the south Mayo Gaeltacht were teaching through Irish.
“It is mainly down to the teaching staff demanding the service through Irish but traditionally the community in those areas have held strong onto the Irish language and that shows in the statistics,” he told The Mayo News after the conference. “There are quite a lot of schools who are not not looking for their inservice in Irish, and this is probably an indicator that the community is not being supportive of the language and the statistics from the different surveys would probably show this is true. The services that are demanded from the education centre as Gaeilge reflect clearly the statistics that other parties are using to show where the Gaeltacht is strong,” he said.
Mr Ó Súilleabháin added that the teaching of subjects through Irish in the post-primary sector was a ‘disaster’ because teachers and schools were not given the necessary support. He revealed that of the seven post-primary schools in the Mayo Gaeltacht only three were making an attempt to teach through Irish and, in his opinion, none were succeeding.
“I can’t see that changing unless the Department have a change of heart and say ‘here are the schools in the Gaeltacht and we have to support them’.