As Gàidhlig medium education (GME) continues to grow in popularity in secondary schools across Scotland, so does the need for additional support within GME classes.

Gàidhlig education brings with it many challenges. There are learner and fluent classes but ability is very mixed. For instance, a Gàidhlig first language pupil may be fluent but could still be in a learner class because they didn’t attend GME in primary. Then there are those in fluent classes who are working at a high standard of reading and sgrìobhadh [writing], but whose labhairt skills [speaking skills] are poor due to little exposure to oral Gàidhlig at home or in the community.

Background: Gaelic becomes default language for island pupils

News: Gaelic education detractors ‘like bad 1970s’ comedians’

Big read: e-Sgoil gives pupils wider choice of subjects

Related: Call for the right to be taught in Gaelic

Given the complex issues and factors that impact a GME child’s learning experience, the challenge to educators of stimulating a bilingual population and sustaining a diverse language community is daunting. And for a language to thrive, there must be a rich social community of speakers.

GME pupils entering the first year of secondary are often assessed for literacy during the first three months. If a student is deemed by the school’s assessor to have difficulty with reading and/or writing, then the school will often recommend that the child withdraw from the GME programme as there are few, if any, ASN teachers available in the Gàidhlig stream.

The lack of ASN teachers in Gaelic medium education

GME pupils are placed in a ‘house’ with other Gàidhlig speakers when they start secondary. They form a social bond with the other pupils in this house. This bond allows them to feel safe and develop a sense of self-efficacy, especially during adolescence. Bonding with a same-language group also enables society to further the sustainability of a language by developing and enriching the social language tools of the group. This is critical for the reproduction of any language, be it English, Gàidhlig, Français... For some children, formal education is their only exposure to the language; the school community is their Gàidhlig community.

In the case of ASN pupils who are removed from the GME stream, they not only stop getting academic support in their first language, or language of learning to this point in school, they are further traumatised by being removed from their social group and safety net at a time when it is needed most in life. Removing all GME pupils with ASNs from GME classes may also create an elite anomaly of attainers. That is, if you only ever have high-performing pupils in one language group, then statistics regarding those learners in the national tables are skewed.

Despite the challenges, the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) and the Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (CnES) [the Western Isles Council] - the authority with the largest number of native Gàidhlig speakers in Scotland - are committed to “promoting opportunities within the curriculum for Gàidhlig learning”.

This past year, the CnES increased efforts to stimulate language diversity by making P1 enrolment into GME the default registration for parents, and provided online Gàidhlig lessons via its e-Sgoil to pupils nationwide.

This P1 to National 5 GME provision could be enhanced ever further if community members, especially teachers, were able to seamlessly use the Gàidhlig throughout their working lives - from filling out reports, to filing their General Teaching Council for Scotland professional updates anns à Ghàidhlig [in Gaelic]. Allowing a rich bilingual life for all levels of learners enhances the language and its profile in education across Scotland.

UHI principal and vice-chancellor Crichton Lang said in an announcement on 22 June, “we all have a duty to include marginalised voices in development of our policies, courses and strategic objectives”. Let’s serve our diverse Scottish communities by including our people’s languages in our daily lives.

Eilidh Graham is a Gàidhlig tidsear [Gaelic teacher] based in the Western Isles