Gaelscoil

Bunscoil in Newry

A gaelscoil (Plural: gaelscoileanna) is an Irish-speaking school, often also co-educational, usually found in Ireland, but outside the predominantly Irish-speaking Gaeltacht areas.

Irish is the working language for these schools. Almost 10% of the schooling population in the Republic of Ireland attend Irish-medium schools.

Overview

The Gaelscoil movement has been the biggest and most successful of any of the European, lesser-used languages immersion education programmes. The movement has also been successful in setting up schools in both urban and rural areas. For example, in Dublin there are 31 Irish-medium primary schools and 8 secondary schools while in Cork there are 22 primary schools and 8 secondary schools. The Gaelscoil initiative has also inspired other similar language immersion projects in Europe such as the Scottish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic, Basque, Occitan, Catalan and Breton schools.

In the Republic of Ireland, Irish is a mandatory subject in primary and secondary education. Between 700,000-800,000 students are taught Irish on a daily basis within the education system; this is similar to the situation of the Welsh language in Wales.

The total number of Irish medium schools(both inside and outside the Gaeltacht) in Ireland is 368 primary and secondary schools.

• Within the Gaeltacht: 127 primary schools : 29 secondary schools with approximately 15,000 students at primary and secondary level.
• Outside the Gaeltacht: 171 primary schools: 43 secondary schools with approximately 35,500 students at primary and secondary level.

The Naíonraí Irish language preschool movement also has 227 crèches across the country with almost 4,000 children attending them.

There are currently over 35,500 pupils (50,000 pupils/students total both inside and outside the Gaeltacht) attending gaelscoileanna, with 298 gaelscoileanna at primary level and 72 schools at post-primary level (gaelcholáistí), in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Gaelscoileanna account for 1% of the Northern Irish school system. The largest gaelscoil in Belfast is Coláiste Feirste. There is now at least one gaelscoil in all 32 traditional counties of Ireland and several in each of the bigger cities — for example Derry has nine.

There are currently nine counties on the island of Ireland that do not have a second-level gaelscoil, Laois, Offaly, Leitrim, Roscommon, Cavan, Sligo, Longford, Fermanagh and Down.

	Ulster	Munster	Leinster	Connacht	Total
Bunscoileanna (Primary schools)	41	46	64	18	169
Meánscoileanna (Secondary schools)	11	22	17	13	63

History

The gaelscoileanna originated at the turn of the 20th century during the Gaelic Revival. Bilinguality from an early age is recommended by many linguists, as it helps children become more adept at learning additional languages. Some studies have shown that bilingual children have advantages over monoglot children in other subjects.

Irish schools in the Gaeltacht regions have always used the Irish language. However, the majority of schools outside these regions use English as this is the first language of the majority of people in non-Gaeltacht regions of Ireland (although in the Republic of Ireland, even English-language schools teach Irish as a mandatory subject).

Gaelscoileanna are Irish-language schools in areas where a majority of people speak English as a first language. There are both Irish-speaking primary and secondary schools, called bunscoileanna and meánscoileanna respectively; these are the lower two tiers of education in Ireland before college (coláiste) / university (ollscoil) - third level education.

A gaelscoil is an Irish-medium primary school. A gaelcholáiste is an Irish-medium secondary school.

The patron body of many gaelscoileanna is An Foras Pátrúnachta na Scoileanna LánGhaeilge Teo.

See also

• Education in Ireland
• Education in Northern Ireland
• Diwan (school) - Breton medium education in Brittany
• Gaelic medium education - Scottish Gaelic equivalent in Scotland
• Medium of instruction
• Welsh medium education

External links

• Template:Ga icon Gaelscoil na Camóige
• Gaelscoileanna
• Naíonraí stats
• Stats on Gaeltacht schools 2004