Gaelic medium education

[parsley455]

Looking for some advice

DD currently in GME primary and will be moving up to high school in a few years. The only school in our local authority that carries on Gaelic as a subject is now getting close to bursting point and this year didn't accept any placing requests out with the catchment area. Myself and a number of others in DDs class are not in the catchment for this high school. I want DD to continue with GME and would ideally want for her to go to the Gaelic High school in Glasgow as a first choice but there are currently no buses put on from our area and I definitely wouldn't look at public transport due to the safety aspect as well as financial. Is anyone able to offer some advice on this and what I would be best doing? Anyone currently have kids at GGH?

Thanks

Hi, what area are you in? What secondary does current primary feed into? x

Move to Glasgow. GCC are rightly prioritising people in the catchment and if your local GME primary has a secondary attached that offers even one subject in GME then your local authority will consider their duty discharged. Push for more offerings of different subjects as well. Side bar: more GME pupils attending will encourage the LA to improve their offering.

So if your local GME secondary is not in you catchment are you not entitled as part of the provision to have your daughter attend? Similar issue in Edinburgh a few years back and parent power and Gaelic agencies got the decision turned around.

@LisaLane we always thought this was the case but unfortunately not. I didn't know if this would then open discussion for the council to provide transport to GGH, seeing as we are not guaranteed a place locally

Also moving is not an option, unfortunately

Firstly, when you make a placing request you take on the responsibility of transporting your child yourself. Obviously I don't know where you live, but I'd be quite happy with a secondary age child commuting to SGG.

However. If you want to guarantee that your child will go to SGG at secondary you really need to move into the GCC. The primary school is getting more and more popular, which will translate into a bigger than ever secondary population just around the time that your DD would be going into S1.

Placing requests in the Central Belt aren't being granted on the same scale as they were even 5 years ago.

If you have a child in you local GME primary school and you live in that local authority then there is an assumption that your child will follow on into the local GME feeder secondary irrespective of whether it is your actual secondary. You need to contact your local Comunn nam Pàrant or the National body, Bòrd na Gaidhlig and your local MSP. There is no point in having a GME provision in primary and no follow on in secondary.

How far are you from Glasgow? Most of the children attending private secondary in Glasgow from large geographical areas use public transport. Why do you think it would be unsafe?

@LemonPrint

The commute would involve 2 x public transport and at 11/12 years old I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable with that. I appreciate what you are saying re placing requests and transport, however the LA provide transport for those out with catchment of the primary. Placing requests now being refused for those same children wanting to continue Gaelic at secondary level locally so now only possible option would be to go further afield. We are unable to move house. The catchment school for my area is one of the top schools which I appreciate I am lucky to have access to but doesn't offer Gaelic and we had always wanted to continue it through secondary but looking less likely that it'll happen. Thanks for your replies and input

My P7 commutes using two buses and they are fine, they have done this for the last year. And I know a dozen S1 -S3 children who commute from S Ayrshire and Lanarkshire to Glasgow by public transport as they attend a specialist school.

Unless your S1 has additional needs of some type, why do you think they wouldn’t be safe ?

I’ve never heard of a LA providing transport for placement requests , unless the catchment school is full or it’s a SN school.

Also SGG is very popular and I can’t see why either GCC or a neighbouring authority would pay for transport just because your preference is for GME. I think you need to be realistic.

@Rosemary46

DD has additional needs but there is a mini bus running to the primary regardless and has done for longer than my daughter has attended. There are actually several running to collect children out with catchment to bring to the GME, provided by the LA so I suppose this is why the idea of something similar to the SGG doesn't seem so far fetched to me. We should have access to the feeder school that provides Gaelic but as I said, they are now rejecting any placing requests, even from Gaelic pupils with is why I am now so concerned.

I'm going to speak to the council and take things from there. Thanks again

If this is really important to you OP, why don't you transport DD yourself? I'm not against choice if there is a demand, but I don't think its appropriate that other tax payers fund that. I say that as a parent who's DC did go to a different school via placing request (transported by me) . I'd also add religious education to that which I guess is more controversial. I think councils should provide standard schools and if parents want anything else then they should fund that. I lost out on promotions and income in order to facilitate our choice, made incidentally due to DC bullying issues. I'm glad we made the choice and grateful we had it, but I'd never have expected anyone else to fund or facilitate that.

Given this is for gaelic medium maybe Nicola will sort it?

@WaxOnFeckOff

Waxonfeckoff is a well respected poster on these boards. You may not agree with her views but there’s no need to be rude.

Quite @Rosemay46.

I'm not quite sure why the suggestion that the OP actually make some personal sacrifice for her own personal choices is scornful?

I'd have quite liked lots of things for my DC but i couldn't afford them and don't expect the rest of the tax payers to fund them so that'll be that. When there are pensioners unable to fund decent care and DC living in damp housing and are inadequately clothed, I'm not quite sure why the people of Glasgow would be happy to fund specialist education at all tbh but that's a debate for another day and I know i'm in the minority on that.

Sometimes people just don't want to hear my view though and that's fair enough.

Out of interest, are all the lessons taught in Gaelic? If so, isn’t that a disadvantage later on if they only know the Gaelic terms rather than the English?

A lot are if the teacher is a gàidhlig speaker. Not all are examined in Gàidhlig. The dominant language is in Gàidhlig in GME in general. No difficulty with terminology so far. Gaidhlig, sciences in BGE, maths, biology, art, graphic comm, English, history, geography, modern studies, music are all taught across Scotland through GME.

I taught in secondary school which had a Gaelic medium feeder primary and offered an immersion class as a progression route.

Some pupils did struggle with unfamiliar vocabulary, I couldn't in my subjects area tell them what Gaelic for personification etc was. That said S1 is full of new subjects and associated jargon for all .my Gaelic teacher colleague invested in Gaelic to English dictionaries to support them around the school.

Anecdotally perhaps, I found the Gaelic medium pupils a bit behind in spelling and sentence construction due to having learned these in a different language. They usually caught up and frequently overtook their counterparts as they had developed a more complex understanding of the rules that native speakers take for granted.

I sympathise as this scenario is not what you signed up for. But placement requests, for a myriad of important reasons, carry this risk and I suppose this is when you have to decide what is the most important factor.

I placement requested for one of my DDs for S6 as she wanted to sit AHs not available at her catchment school. She would have been a bus and a train if I hadn't provided her transportation- and I do appreciate that an S6 is very different.

@Twooter

Gaelic medium schools teach pupils to have the same high level of attainment in English as in Gaelic.

People in Switzerland grow up speaking three languages and loads of them seem to end up working for the UN. Fluency in an additional language is never a disadvantage

I'm also wondering why you can't transport her?. I take my kids to school every day as they attend a specialist school about 5 mile from our house with no direct transport.

It would be much easier to go to the school at the end of the road but that's what we've chosen.

A friend of Dd's went there from East Kilbride, they sorted out transport, as should you if it's the choice you've made.

EK kids have LA organised transport back to EK from SGG. As do renfrewshire and east Renfrew kids. All organised by their LA.

As a GCC council tax payer I think it's fair enough that priority is given to those who live in the authority. Why should those who don't contribute to the school be given priority over those who do?
If you want GME education in your authority then campaign for it. If you want your authority to transport your child to a different authority for schooling, contact your councillor. I think it's entirely right that these things are not automatic entitlements

People in Switzerland grow up speaking three languages and loads of them seem to end up working for the UN. Fluency in an additional language is never a disadvantage

While this is true it isn't true of Gaelic - the only place you need Gaelic is in a school teaching it.

There are one or two jobs available in Gaidhlig media.