CHATTERING CLASSES:
THE AMAZING LIST OF LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN OUR SCHOOLS
EIGHT per cent of pupils in Northern Ireland don’t speak English as their first language at home, new statistics from the Department of Education have revealed.
Polish and Lithuanian are the most widely spoken common languages after English.
But despite over 7,000 pupils now attending Irish medium schools, only 529 pupils have their home language listed as Irish.
And only seven pupils in total across Northern Ireland use Ulster Scots as their means of communication with family. Indeed, more children speak Marathi and Gujarati, which are spoken in India, or even Igbo from Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea.
Five even speak Zulu with their parents at home.
Polish remains the second most common first language of Northern Ireland’s schoolchildren, figures obtained by the Belfast Telegraph reveal.
The number of pupils in primary, post-primary and special schools with Polish as their home language was 6,983, a rise from 6,671 in 2017/18.
Lithuanian is the third most common with 3,101 speakers, up from 2,797 in 2017/18.
English is spoken as a first language by 312,336 pupils (92%).
Professor Janice Carruthers, Professor of French Linguistics at Queen’s University and AHRC Leadership Fellow in Modern Languages, said that the diversity of languages now being spoken at home by children is something to be celebrated.
“While it is vital that newcomer children have every opportunity to learn English, it is also extremely important that the home languages of newcomer children are valued in the school environment,” said Prof Carruthers.
“Language is a key part of a child’s identity and linguistic diversity is something to be celebrated. All children who speak English and an additional language — whether that language is Polish, Lithuanian, Chinese, Arabic, Irish, Ulster Scots, or any other language — will grow up with the ability to move between languages and cultures. In addition to cognitive benefits, this will give them an advantage in the job market, whether they opt to work locally or globally.”
The Department of Education collects language information as part of the school census, which parents complete when their child enrols.
The department uses the term ‘newcomer’ to refer to a pupil who does not have satisfactory language skills to participate fully in the school curriculum and does not have a language in common with the teacher.
However, the language question is not just applicable to children whose parents have recently moved to Northern Ireland, a Department of Education spokesperson explained.
“Newcomer and Home language are two different things. A pupil may have a home language other than English but not be a Newcomer.
“This designation does not refer to indigenous pupils who choose to attend an Irish-medium school or Unit. That circumstance is dealt with under the Irish medium education policy.”
Among other first languages of NI pupils, 245 speak Urdu, 33 are fluent in Japanese and 113 converse naturally in Romany.
Of the more common western European languages, Spanish is most popular with 366 speakers, 151 speak Italian and 96 German.
‘Language is key and diversity needs to be celebrated’