Minister for Education Norma Foley has defended a revised process under which secondary school students can seek exemptions from studying Irish.
The system is “very much moving away” from a diagnostic-led approach to the granting of exemptions, Ms Foley told the Oireachtas Committee on the Irish Language.
Changes introduced by the Department of Education in 2019 meant that pupils seeking to opt out of studying Irish could do so without requiring psychologists’ reports. Revised circulars issued this year widened the criteria again to include students reporting multiple and persistent educational needs.
The Minister said exemptions are only granted after “considerable interventions” take place in schools. These take place “over a prolonged period of time - most notably two years,” she said.
Fianna Fáil TD Pádraig O’Sullivan, a former Irish teacher, said this was not his experience when he was teaching. “I was working in a secondary school up to 2019 and I am telling you that in my experience those interventions were not taking place at that point,” he said while speaking in Irish. “There was no two-year conversation between teachers or anyone else in the staff room.”
Discussions were limited to a “five-minute conversation with the special needs co-ordinator or with the principal”.
“I can’t speak to your experience but I also have considerable experience in the school sector myself,” Ms Foley responded. “And I do know that schools must be in a position to produce a portfolio, they must be in a position to show where there have been interventions over a two-year period, where there has been engagement with the special education teacher and when the inspectorate visits a school they are entitled to see that information, to see how it is being progressed.”
Ms Foley said the number of exemptions has remained steady in recent years.
“Approximately 1.9 per cent are exempted at primary level, down from 3.3 per cent in 2017, and at post primary level it has remained steady in and around 10.5 per cent currently, and previously in 2017 [it was] at around 9 per cent,” she said.
Critics have questioned the rationale for employing subject exemptions for Irish as a large number of students who secure exemptions go on to study a modern language for the Leaving Certificate.
Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív said this issue has been raised “again and again” by the committee and asked how students can take up a new language in secondary school while unable to continue with the study of Irish despite having spent years learning it in primary school.
“I don’t think it is fair that because they have an exemption from one subject that we should seek to ensure that they don’t have opportunities at other subjects, I think that would defeat the purpose,” Ms Foley said.
In a response to a question by Marc Ó Cathasaigh of the Green Party, Ms Foley attributed the numbers availing of exemptions to a greater understanding of special educational needs.
“We know so much more now about special education than we did if you go back to the 1990s,” she said. “That time in our schools we had 104 special education teachers and 229 SNAs. Today we have 19,000 special education teachers and 20,000 SNAs and that is because our understanding of special education has advanced tenfold.”
“It is important that for that reason, given that our knowledge and breath of understanding of special education has increased exponentially, that we would expect the grounds on which the exemptions [are allowed] would also increase.”
Independent TD Catherine Connolly said she would expect that fewer exemptions would be required as a result of the additional supports now in place.
Meanwhile, Irish language legislation has passed through the final stages of its legislative journey at Westminster.
The legislation, promised in New Decade New Approach, received a third reading yesterday in the House of Commons.
Along with the repeal of the penal law-era 1737 Act of Justice (Ireland) legislation which banned the use of Irish from courts, a new office for an Irish language commissioner will be created under the legislation.
Welcoming the development, president of Conradh na Gaeilge, Paula Melvin, described it as “another historic staging post in this ongoing campaign for equality”
“The Irish language community has been fighting for these rights for decades and in that regard to see the Irish language be afforded official recognition here for the first time is indeed historic,” she said.
The bill will now go forward for royal assent and commencement dates will be issued by the Northern Ireland Office.
