Aibu to think there is advantages to Gaelic schools eg Irish/Welsh/Scottish medium education? Thinking of sending dc to one... All opinions appreciated

[MammabearX1]

Hi, I'm in Ireland & the best local shool in the area is a Gaelscoil (all subjects done through irish language)
DH & I have barely any irish from the leaving cert. Please tell me aibu to consider irish medium for dc?
Please tell me about
-the benefits of attending a Gaelic medium school

• does English or maths suffer
• are the children usually more driven seeing as it was a conscious choice by the parents?
• my family consider the Gaelscoils extremely snobby, I can't understand this as they are not fee paying...
• please tell me about irish speaking secondary schools. Do children who go to the Irish secondary schools generally get more points.

Thanks in advance..

My kids attend Iosagain/ Eoin in south Dublin - generally near the top if not top of the league tables . No snobbery whatsoever from our perspective.

Fabulous education , parents all very nice and down to earth ( but tend to be quite highly educated ). Great work ethic - all the kids want to do well.
No fees- win,win. I highly recommend if you are lucky enough to get in .

I'm quite unfamiliar with Irish medium schools but I'd question if you get a diversity of pupils going through them.My children attended integrated schools in Northern Ireland in a deliberate attempt to have them mixing with people from all cultures and backgrounds. It has stood them in really good stead and they have a great range of friends.

Ds went to primary and secondary gaelscoil, loved it, did v well. Now in 4th yr in college and found no difficulty whatsoever in moving to education thru english.

Mine went to naiscoil, bunscoil and now ardscoil in NI. I have a some Irish, did it for GCSE, not enough to be bi lingual. It hasn’t been a problem in terms of helping with school work. The schools have been very helpful and know that the parents’ have varying levels of Irish from none through to fluent. The good thing about the schools my DCs attended is that the Irish mediums units were both within mainstream English speaking schools so there was a huge amount of integration. One thing I felt was a huge plus for the Irish medium education is the world of Irish culture that it opens DC up to. Its stuff that you’d never think of looking for if you were in mainstream school but because they were in the Irish medium and the community around that was so supportive of the Irish language and culture that it was all just there and the DC were instantly part of it.

My DC may leave school and never utter another word in Irish but who cares? They had to be educated so I figured why not give them a second language for free if it’s being offered.

i think the fact that almost all of the pupils will be white, would put me off.

slight over-exaggeration @Sapho47? Even Birmingham as the UK's second biggest city is less than half the population size of Wales. Cardiff is apparently the Uk's 11th biggest city on its own.

Anyway, why does it matter what proportion of people worldwide speak a language, if someone wants to stay living in their own country then of course it would be more beneficial to speak the native language of that country as well as possible particularly if they already have the huge benefit of also being fluent in the most widely spoken language in the world....rather than learning a completely different language from a country they know nobody, have no links with and no guarantee they will ever visit let alone live/work in

BiL went to one of these schools. Struggled at university as he had to translate everything to Gaelic and then back to English. Interestingly has virtually no memory now of Gaelic.

My questions to you would be:

• do your kids have a good ear for languages? If not it could be a very bad decision. What happens to pupils who struggle with languages? Do they have to drop out and change schools?
• would you be prepared to increase your knowledge of the language and speak it at home?
• what makes it the best school in the area ...is it purely exam results?
• what do you think the advantages might be? Better results? Fluency in Gaelic?

@alexdgr8

i think the fact that almost all of the pupils will be white, would put me off.

There are plenty of schools within Scotland's central belt where, if there are any non-white pupils, they're counted in single numbers.

Some languages are terribly difficult for people to learn e.g. if you are dyslexic you are likely to find French harder to learn than Spanish or Latin.

Some people do struggle more with languages than others. Some find it easier. My kids have friends that speak several languages.

@jewel1968

Some languages are terribly difficult for people to learn e.g. if you are dyslexic you are likely to find French harder to learn than Spanish or Latin.

Some people do struggle more with languages than others. Some find it easier. My kids have friends that speak several languages.

Sure, but most native English monoglots aren’t dyslexic, and still often have the most bizarre attitude to learning other languages, like it’s a combination of climbing Everest in bad visibility and at the same time cringe-inducing lay embarrassing.

Some people find some languages easier than others, obviously, but it’s pretty subjective. I’ve always found German far more difficult than French, Spanish or Italian, but both my sisters, who began, like me, with school French and German, both found the opposite. I found Arabic easier than I expected, and Portuguese much harder.

@Silurian clearly you are able to learn languages and so you probably struggle to understand those that don't. I sometimes find it hard to understand why people can't ice skate cos I find it easy.

Thanks so much for the replies, we've accepted the Gaelscoil offer here in North co Dublin. We're going to do extra work on the English side of things ourselves to ensure it's on par with children her age..

I know kids currently in a Gaeilscoil and knew many Gaeilscolairi in Irish college and in university.

I would say that the element of careful and conscious choice on the part of the parents indicates there is often a good deal more interest on the part of parents in their children's education, and this shows when it comes to exam results. Anyone saying this is 'snobby' has tall poppy problems, imo.

I also know a child attending St Kilian"s German school - there are no issues with maths or English (or Irish), and even though the parents don't speak German, jumping in at the deep end hasn't been a problem. Children's brains are like sponges

That's a good decision imo. Wishing you well!

Fwiw, on the topic of "useless languages", Irish features just about every single grammatical feature known to western European languages. Someone upthread mentioned the usefulness of that when learning coding, and I second that.

Mathanxiety thanks so much for the replies, it's such a tricky decision. Dc is so excited though!
Cácacoisfarraige, the very best of luck to your dc, thats great to hear your friends are very happy!

The trips to the Gaeltacht sound great!