Win-win for popular and successful Gaelic schools

AELIC medium education is a success story and nowhere more so than in Glasgow. With unprecedented demand for places the city council is now considering expanding its secondary provision and is consulting on opening a third Gaelic medium (GME) primary school, with two possible sites in the south west of the city under consideration.

Like all councils, it has been obliged by the Scottish Government, since last month, to provide an assessment when any parent requests GME for their child. But that is not why education chiefs in Glasgow are proposing another school. The existing schools are popular because they perform well academically, and the benefits of a bilingual education are now wellevidenced, particularly for wider literacy skills.

There are caveats. Fewer than 20 per cent of children enrolled in the city’s specialist primaries now come from a Gaelic background which brings its own challenges. And there is an element of selfselection in the schools’ success. If parents are motivated enough to seek out and apply for places, their children tend to be starting from the kind of engaged home backgrounds known to promote educational attainment.

In a consultation about the schools being oversubscribed, some parents expressed concern that others saw it as a “free private school”, while others felt too few parents were making an effort to learn any Gaelic themselves.

Teacher shortages are a concern. This can and is being addressed, but training new fluent Gaelic speakers to teach takes time, while Gaelicspeaking teachers and support staff working in other schools have not always been eager to transfer to work in GME.

But urban demand is clearly providing a new impetus to the language and ultimately boosting its prospects of survival. Misplaced arguments about whether investment is worthwhile and whether the language is “living” are becoming increasingly redundant. Gaelic is alive and thriving and taking on new forms, and that is to be celebrated.