This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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Gaelic medium education
16/09/2003
Steps to strengthen policy and action
on Gaelic medium education were announced today.
While recognising progress by local
authorities, Education Minister Peter Peacock believes they
could "improve further" in relation to Gaelic medium
education following detailed analysis of plans for wider
progress and improvement objectives which have been sent to
the Executive.
Speaking on a visit to the BBC Gaelic
Department, Mr Peacock announced a series of clear actions
to be taken. He said:
"I have instructed officials to ensure
that education authorities are clearly reminded of the
duties which flow from the Standards in Scotland's Schools
Act 2000 in relation to Gaelic medium education and my
clear expectation that they should account fully for those
provisions within their reports and plans.
This will be done in a series of individual
discussions between education authorities and officials
over coming weeks.
"Authorities' improvement objectives
have to take account of the performance measures published
for the National Priorities. These include the number and
percentage of requests for Gaelic medium education met by
the authority.
This highlights the need for authorities to
establish thresholds against which they will assess
parental demand for Gaelic medium within their area.
"I also intend to formally invite Bòrd
Gàidhlig and the local authorities to set up a joint group
to review the performance measure for Gaelic within the
National Priorities for Education and suggest any revisions
they believe will support a better measure of the outcome
to be achieved for pupils.
"I want to send the clearest possible
signal to education authorities that I take the advancement
of Gaelic medium education very seriously - it is the key
to strengthening a fragile language - and Parliament was
clear what it wanted through the explicit measures in the
2000 Act. These are significant duties placed on education
authorities and were designed to recognise Gaelic medium
education and encourage its development."
He added:
"It is early days yet in the
application of the improvement framework under the 2000 Act
and while much progress has been made I will not hesitate
to use powers to issue statutory guidance if the further
development of education authority improvement plans
demonstrates that is needed."
The Minister further indicated a
willingness to invite Bòrd Gàidhlig to both advise
education authorities in developing Gaelic medium plans
under the terms of the 2000 Act and to assist the Executive
in assessing those plans, should that be seen to be
helpful.
The provision of Gaelic medium
education is the responsibility of the education
authorities. Regulations made in 1986 empower Scottish
Ministers to pay grants to education authorities for Gaelic
education and more than £3 million is for 2003-04. An extra
£1 million has been set aside for Gaelic development in
2003-04, with Bòrd Gàidhlig giving a view on what
percentage should be devoted to Gaelic-medium
education.
The Standards in Scotland's Schools
Act 2000 set new requirements for education authorities to
plan for and secure improvement. It places specific
requirements on authorities to address Gaelic medium
education in their annual statements of improvement
objectives and annual progress reports.
An authority's annual statements of
improvement objectives and progress reports must also have
regard to the National Priorities in Education.
These include paying particular regard to
'Gaelic and other lesser used languages'. The performance
measures for the National Priorities published under the
2000 Act include the number and percentage of written
requests for Gaelic medium education which were met by the
authority.
The Executive has started to assess
the impact of the 2000 Act through the first reports from
local authorities on progress towards their improvement
objectives. Several local authorities have been able to
report meeting all, or the overwhelming majority, of
parental requests for Gaelic medium education. Many
authorities have also used the improvement framework to
embed their policies around Gaelic medium education fully
into their wider strategy for school education.