Both Scots and Gaelic face challenges: both languages have seen a decline in the number of people using these languages in their daily lives.
The Scottish Languages Bill aims to provide official support to these languages by giving them an official status in Scotland. As the bill is going through the first stages, various organisations and individuals have been invited to give evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee, with the session on 8 May focusing on Gaelic and Scots in the education system.
Currently, these languages are represented in very different ways. Gaelic can either be used as a medium of instruction - Gaelic-medium education, or GME, where all the teaching and learning takes place in the language - or can be taught as a subject.
Gaelic can also be introduced in primary schools as either the second (L2) or third language (L3) under the 1+2 languages policy. Young people should have an opportunity to continue to learn Gaelic until the end of the “broad general education” stage (which takes pupils up through the first three years of secondary school) and beyond to national qualifications levels, even into degree programmes.
Scots language provision ‘much more limited’
The provision for Scots is much more limited and tends to be focused on providing input as an L3 under the 1+2 languages policy. One barrier to schools including Scots has been the lack of national level qualifications in the language - which means that it can only be delivered as the L3, with schools often linking the teaching of Scots to Burns Night celebrations in January.
To strengthen the position of Scots in the education system, and provide it with a similar status to that of Gaelic, the first step would be to create a suite of national level qualifications in the language - beyond the Scots Language Award currently available to young people.
“When we speak about clear, achievements and targets, I think we need to be very clear about the outcomes for Gaelic Medium Education.”
Last week Dr Inge Birnie, from @SCDEducation, spoke to us about the Scottish Languages Bill. Watch back: https://t.co/VxtPYucQY3 pic.twitter.com/MQKlwmOiFS
- Education, Children and Young People Committee (@SP_ECYP) May 13, 2024
However, having the opportunity to gain a qualification in a language does not guarantee a high uptake: Gaelic was the third most popular L2 language taught in primary school - after French and Spanish - but in 2022 this only involved 3 per cent of primary schools and 5 per cent of secondary schools, with the presentations for Gaelic (learners) at all levels of national qualifications, remaining relatively low.
Questions the Scottish Languages Bill must answer
To strengthen the inclusion of Scots and Gaelic in the education system, the Scottish Languages Bill will need to spell out what it means to “promote, facilitate and support” them.
It is not clear from the bill what this might look like in practice in our classroom: would this continue to form part of the current 1+2 languages policy, or might it require changes to the curriculum to include the teaching and learning of either or both languages in all schools in Scotland?
This raises further questions about how these provisions would be implemented and how teachers in schools can be supported to deliver these expectations.
This will require opportunities for teachers to learn these languages, as well as expanding the range of teaching and learning resources that can be used in classrooms to help our young people gain both a linguistic and cultural understanding of the position of Gaelic and Scots, both historically and in contemporary Scotland.
The aim of the Scottish Languages Bill is to secure the status of Scots and Gaelic, but also to ensure that they continue to be used as living languages that have a place in the diverse and multicultural communities that make up Scotland today.
The education system has an important part to play in delivering this - but this will require dedicated resources and support for our teachers to fulfil these high expectations.
Dr Ingeborg Birnie is a senior lecturer at the Strathclyde Institute of Education, at the University of Strathclyde
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