Ireland’s open economy means we need cohorts of workers fluent in a wide range of languages, verbally and in writing. And each language cohort should include people from a range of disciplines and occupations, such as business, engineering, science, hospitality, tourism, and so on. To engage with the Chinese on electronic engineering, we need electronic engineers who speak fluent Chinese and not just someone with an A in higher-level Chinese in the Leaving Cert.
Last year PayPal had to “import” 500 employees, fluent in 20 languages, for its customer support office in Dundalk. It is unrealistic to think that our education system will one day be able to produce the linguistically skilled workers the PayPals or Googles of this world require.
We need a radical rethink, and a good starting point is the 2011 census, which shows that more than half a million Irish residents live in homes where English is not the first language. Many of them work in low-skilled jobs, though their educational standard is relatively high. They often have a good standard of English, so it should be cost-effective to enhance their English so that they can do work commensurate with their education, using both English and their first language.
The 2011 census gives us the numbers of Irish residents, broken down by age group and first language, who speak English well while also being native speakers of languages critical to Ireland’s economy. A very large proportion of these new Irish are in our school system or about to enter it, and if we were, over the course of their education, to assist these young people to acquire written fluency in these languages, they could, at little cost to the State, increase the availability of workers fluent in foreign languages. We have failed to recognise the benefits of assisting young people who already speak a foreign language in the home to acquire full written fluency in these languages.
Several national groups work hard to ensure their children’s written fluency in their heritage language, but they get little support or encouragement. We see such teaching as beneficial to newcomer families contemplating returning home, but we don’t see the possible advantage to Ireland. However, we have much to gain from these young people acquiring competency in their heritage languages.
Not only would we have workers for jobs in call and support centres, but we would have more highly qualified professionals who could communicate confidently with colleagues around the globe. Such bilingual – and, in a sense, bicultural – workers could also, through their roots in their families’ countries of origin, provide business, cultural and even political connections that would take the bilingual native Irish person a long time to develop.
While students can take the Leaving Cert in a wide range of European languages, this will not give them the level of competence that workers require. What is needed is native-speaker proficiency, the standard of those who come from homes where English is the second language.
How can we tap into this resource? We need to encourage and support national groups to develop their children’s oral and written proficiency in heritage languages, to their benefit and to Ireland’s. This means providing access to schools outside of school hours, free, for classes.
We need to explore how teaching heritage languages can be integrated into the school curriculum, from infants to Leaving Cert. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, working with departments of education in Poland, Lithuania, India, China, and so on, could develop a comprehensive language curriculum right through the school years, as well as a suite of eteaching and elearning programmes. This way, heritage language learners, with minimal supervision, could devote some time each day to language learning, as long as they have internet access and headphones.
As the aim would be to develop native-speaker proficiency, the language curriculum would need to be aligned with those of other countries, rather than with the Irish foreign-language curriculum. Similarly, exams and accreditation would need to be at the level required. For example, students taking Polish could sit the Matura exam in Polish rather than a Leaving Cert exam, and this could be incentivised with bonus CAO points.
In a globalised world, foreign-language proficiency is critical. Can we continue to ignore this reality?
Pat O’Mahony is education and research officer at Education and Training Boards Ireland
