Gaelic Medium Education

[Libelula21]

I’ve enrolled my child into Gaelic medium education (without any Gaelic myself) and would appreciate any comments about how other GME parents have found the experience, and advice about how to support with homework, etc. It’s Gaelic immersion until P4, so I’m not sure about what to do about introducing English language reading at home - the alphabet and letter sounds, etc, are so different.

My child is in GME, about to start P4. We have a little Gaelic - I didn't have much when he started, but I am learning. It does help if you learn a little, and there are a lot of resources out there (the Gaelic4parents website is one). I can also give some other links, if that would be useful. Our school ran a Gaelic phonics workshop in P1 which parents could attend - that was handy. We are very positive about GME - our child is now fluent.
On English, I would advise you not to teach English phonics and reading at home. Let them pick it up in P4. It's not a problem at all.
Feel free to ask any questions.

You will get support from the school to help with homework, they will be aware not all children are in Gaelic speaking homes. This is a really useful site if you haven’t used already - www.gaelic4parents.com.

You can get readings of many of the set books there - also check youtube.

About learning to read/write English at home - we were advised not to do it early on if it was only coming from the parents, but only as the child becomes interested / curious themselves about learning English. This approach worked well for us. We didn’t do much at all at the start of P1 - I can’t remember exactly when we did start - but we did end up doing plenty at home before English was introduced as a second language in P4., and it didn’t cause any issues. (We did quite a lot of English in ‘homeschooling’ during lockdown actually - as we are also not fluent Gaelic speakers!).

Don’t worry about them being behind with English. Bilingual children might take a bit longer to reach early milestones in English literacy I think - according to research - which makes sense as they are doing it in two languages! - but they do very quickly catch up. It is amazing what their brains can do and they will have a fantastic experience of fluency in two languages at this early age.

GME has been great for us, even as a monolingual family I must say - not just the language but the window to Gaelic culture. Our GME primary also had a very creative and nurturing ethos & brilliant, dedicated teachers.

This is fairly common in Wales so it might be worth asking on the Welsh thread. Is is Draignet I think it's called.

I considered GME in Scotland, at the open day we were told very clearly by the HT that GME is not an easy option and that we would have to learn Gaelic to support our child.
I am now in Wales and parents are told that it is absolutely no problem if we cannot speak Welsh and any child can join WME at any age and it will all be fine.
I have to say I think the GME teacher was more honest.

My children go to a Welsh medium primary school were about 70/80% of the parents can't speak Welsh. It really doesn't matter. All letters are bilingual, homework is bilingual unless it's English homework which is in English only.

The Welsh medium schools are based on the immersion principal as well.

Thanks for the replies and range of views. It is my intention to learn some Gaelic, before homework is introduced.
I’ve also wondered whether the smaller pool of available teachers might impact the quality of teaching.

Unless I’m mistaken, many if not most l of the Gaelic high schools are units within other secondary schools, so it’s hard to track academic performance into Highers?

Well the research by O'Hanlon, Paterson and others indicates that pupils in bilingual or immersion education tend to have higher attainment than those in monolingual education. But that study focused on primary and early secondary school attainment.

Thanks @Beithe

Did they control for the parents? WME and GME where I live is the option for higher-socio economic parents and/ or those who are very committed to their children's education. So its no wonder those kids do better. They arguably drain the higher performing kids out of the English language schools in the more mixed/ deprived areas, in the same way that private schools do for state schools.

I’ve also wondered whether the smaller pool of available teachers might impact the quality of teaching
When I was considering GME I did ask a colleague whose child had been through it for her views. One of her criticisms was that its a very small community and they all know each other, so when there was a teacher who was underperforming it just wasn't dealt with. And yes, there is a small pool of teachers. The HT also told me that they cannot always get Gaelic speaking teachers so in some years they have had to employ english speaking teachers.

I think this depends on how well your kid is doing anyway. If your kid is struggling and needs extra support at home, you won't be able to provide it. So in most cases it will be okay, but not all.

My DCs went through GME. It's a commitment if you want your children to attain fluency and learn what they should be learning. They will have basic understanding by the end of P1. If you start to learn the basics with them you can support them. You'll need to seek out regular extracurricular opportunities so they can hear and speak it outside of school if you really want them to be fully fluent by the end of P7. The better their fluency the better their learning will be. Also get them watching BBC Alba and have the Gàidhlig radio on at times. Many don't achieve full fluency because of this.

Most Gàidhlig secondary provision is in English medium secondaries so it's only Gàidhlig itself offered at N5/higher so I'm not sure what you mean by tracking academic performance into highers. If they do highers in English surely that's trackable. Bear in mind that ASN can be managed in GME but can also be an obstacle to their progression in a language that they don't speak at home.

WRT the small pool of teachers many of the teachers who taught my DCs came from English medium primaries and were fluent in 2 languages (at least). They all do the same PGDE and go through the same assessment to qualify so the standard is as high, if not higher as the GME competent teachers can do do it in 2 languages. Good luck.

Interesting comments, thanks all. I’m committed now, just having a last minute wobble. You only get one chance to get your child’s education right. I can see all the benefits, but Gaelic seems so critically endangered in Scotland now that in some ways it feels like a bit of a gamble. I guess it’s what you make of it, and I di intend to start learning the language myself too.

That’s great @Libelula21 , all the best with it. There are lots of resources online for beginners, and of course Duolingo, but I found a council-run evening conversational course was the best for me - really enjoyed it. It was interesting comparing notes with DC too (some differences in teachers’ local dialect!).

I think if you are feeling a bit wobbly (and you are not alone in that) it’s useful also to develop a thick skin for the odd negative comment you might get about GME. In my experience most out-and-out hostility to it - I mean eg comments on news articles etc - is fairly uninformed/baseless. It’s still early days so I think in general there will be more acceptance as time goes on. I’m not sure if it’s true but I have heard that widespread Welsh medium education is now a lot less controversial than it used to be. And attitudes are changing, especially among younger people - www.gaidhlig.scot/en/scottish-social-attitudes-survey/
So hopefully it won’t be endangered for long!