When Jim Whannel was at secondary school in Glasgow in the 1970s there was no Gaelic-medium education (GME) on offer. While there were other opportunities to study the language, he remembers being actively discouraged from pursuing them by some of his secondary school teachers.
“One of the teachers asked me, ‘What’s a bright boy like you doing something like that?’” he recalls.
Regardless, Whannel continued to study Gaelic at the city’s Langside College and now - after working as a social worker, primary headteacher and education adviser for Glasgow City Council - he is director of Gaelic education at the public body responsible for promoting the language, Bòrd na Gàidhlig.
Today GME is present - or soon to be present - in 17 of Scotland’s 32 local authority areas. However, Whannel says that it remains true that Gaelic is “rarely available in Scottish secondary schools as a modern language”. That, he says, is something that must change.
“There is one area in which we, as a country, do really poorly, and that’s the teaching of Gaelic as a modern language,” says Whannel. “In Ireland and Wales there’s a much better infrastructure for teaching Welsh and Irish as modern languages, but historically Scotland has done that really, really poorly.”
Teaching the language at secondary would not be about producing fluent Gaelic speakers, he says, but enabling more people to understand why Gaelic is important and what it means to the country.
Teaching the Gaelic language in schools
“It would be our view that progressively, over a period of time, every child in Scotland should have that opportunity to meet the Gaelic language at some point in their education. To leave Scottish education without ever having met Gaelic at any point in your education is unacceptable,” says Whannel.
“It doesn’t mean they will all come out fluent Gaelic speakers or all have their National 5 or their Higher - absolutely not - but if they do not meet the Gaelic language at any point in their career in Scottish education, it is not acceptable.”
Whannel is speaking to Tes Scotland as the consultation on the next iteration of the National Gaelic Language Plan, which will cover the period 2023 to 2028, comes to a close.
It is still in draft form but it sets the goal that “all sectors will ensure that children in Scotland are provided with an opportunity to learn, and learn about, Gaelic as an [second or third language]”. Under the Scottish government’s 1+2 initiative, Scottish pupils are expected to begin learning a first additional language from the start of their time at primary school and a second from Primary 5.
The 2023-28 plan states that the aim is to “increase the understanding and interest in Gaelic language nationally and create a pathway to learning Gaelic as a modern language in secondary”.
Under the third iteration of the plan, which covers 2018 to 2023, some key targets for the development of Gaelic have been missed. For example, the plan set the goal of establishing 10 standalone GME primaries but just seven have materialised - one more than existed when the plan came into being in 2018. Bòrd na Gàidhlig has stated that there will not be 10 standalone Gaelic schools by 2023.
There are plans for a new Gaelic-medium standalone primary in Glasgow, but it is not expected to open until 2024.
Figures also show limited growth in the proportion of young people educated through the medium of Gaelic over the period covered by the plan, and no change in the proportion learning the language.
A briefing prepared by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Spice) showed that, between 2017 and 2021, the proportion of Scottish pupils in GME increased by around 0.2 per cent in primary and 0.1 per cent in secondary.
The percentage of pupils learning Gaelic as a second language stayed the same, at 0.9 per cent of learners.
The pandemic, of course, has - as with so much else - had a negative impact on progress.
Nevertheless, there are positives to report. There is a Bòrd na Gàidhlig-funded pilot underway, in partnership with the University of Strathclyde, that should allow eight modern languages teachers to acquire the skills they need to teach Gaelic. And in August Renfrewshire Council will begin delivering GME for the first time.
East Renfrewshire is due to start offering GME the following year in August 2023 and Fife Council is also looking to introduce GME, says Whannel.
The risk of Gaelic becoming extinct
However, there are places - such as Applecross in Highland Council - where parents want GME and the council has agreed to provide it but no staff can be found to deliver it. And then there are areas such as Glasgow, which has been successful in rolling out GME but where the number of places for children starting GME primary school has been capped because of fears about not having enough places in secondary GME.
Around 180 children in Glasgow have applied for GME in Primary 1 in 2022-23, says Bòrd na Gàidhlig, but the cap is 140.
Whannel told the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee in June that “the bòrd does not agree with caps on Gaelic-medium education”.
This again shows, he says, why being able to study Gaelic as a language at school is important, because it opens up another avenue to boost the Gaelic-speaking workforce, including teachers.
Modern languages teachers, Whannel points out, typically teach the languages they learned at school, which tend to be French, Spanish, German or Italian - but not Gaelic.
In Scotland, he says, there is really only one route just now for producing the Gaelic teachers of the future, and that is Gaelic-medium education.
Whannel believes a national consensus - that the Gaelic language is important, that it is “a good thing” and should be promoted - is needed. Once that is established, he says more challenging targets should be set for councils to introduce GME where it does not exist currently, and to increase provision more rapidly where it does.
Whannel is unequivocal about Gaelic’s importance.
“If we value diversity, if we value pluralism, if we value culture, then we have got to look at our own cultural basket that we have as a country. It’s our responsibility to protect and promote the indigenous culture of the country because if we don’t do that Gaelic ceases to exist - and that makes it different from [other languages studied in schools, such as] French, German, Polish or Chinese.
“They are all very important - we must promote and protect these language, too - but we have a special responsibility for Gaelic because these other languages do not cease to exist if Scotland does not promote them. Gaelic does.”
His fears about the impact on Gaelic if this does not happen, then, can be distilled to a blunt and brutal three-word prognosis: “Gaelic is over.”
