Meeting of the Parliament 24 April 2018
The interpreters can relax: I do not have the Gaelic and I will not torture any word of the language by pretending otherwise. However, I have a little experience—albeit vicarious—of the recent historical context of this debate.
My secondary school was Inverness Royal academy. In those days, many young people from the islands had to go there for their secondary education and they all boarded together in a hostel. They could study for a higher in their language—Gaelic—but that was it. There was no opportunity for learning in the language or even using the language otherwise. I will not overstate the case, but that was a small community in a big school that suffered a kind of othering. Even then, it seemed to me that that was a pretty dismal kind of education provision for those young people, and, in truth, pretty shameful.
When the Parliament passed the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill in 2005, Peter Peacock, speaking for the then Government, looked back to 1616 and legislation that decreed that Gaelic be “abolisheit and removeit” from Scotland. The school system in the 1970s might not have gone that far, but it was hardly a nurturing environment for Gaelic.
Now, more than 4,000 pupils learn entirely in the Gaelic language and parents have the right to request that for their children; Scotland has a Gaelic TV channel; and 50 of our public bodies have Gaelic language plans in place. All of that—including, of course, the national plans; we note the publication of the third national plan—flows from the historic Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005. Our amendment simply adds acknowledgement of that to the Government’s motion, which we are also glad to support.
Scottish Labour has a good record of supporting the Gaelic language. Apart from Peter Peacock’s leadership in the Parliament in 2005, Labour-led Strathclyde Regional Council opened the first Gaelic-medium education unit at Sir John Maxwell primary school in 1985, and Labour-led Glasgow City Council opened the first standalone Gaelic school in 1999. The United Kingdom Labour Government ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2001, and the Communications Act 2003 provided the legal underpinning for BBC Alba.
There is, of course, a long way to go. In the debate on the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill in 2005, Alex Neil, at his most Churchillian, said:
“The bill represents not the end of the story but the end of the beginning of the story of the regeneration of Gaelic.”—[Official Report, 21 April 2005; c 16343.]
He was right. The last census—in 2011—showed a slight decline in Gaelic speakers, although, much more positively, it also showed an increase in young speakers. Although there are more pupils in Gaelic-medium education and more Gaelic schools now, the most recent official figures showed a drop in the number of pupils sitting Gaelic qualifications at both the national 5 and higher levels. Labour has repeatedly raised the issue of the narrowing of the school curriculum with the introduction of the new national exams. We have presented evidence that enrolments and attainments have been squeezed and that certain subjects have particularly suffered. Gaelic is one of those.
The other well-known problem, which Liz Smith rightly drew attention to, is the difficulty of recruiting Gaelic teachers and Gaelic-medium teachers. Indeed, last year, in response to the Education and Skills Committee’s work on teacher workforce planning, a Gaelic-medium teacher described in his written submission his frustration that the
“Failure to recruit fluent Gaelic staff, or adequately train non-Gaelic speaking staff results in only a minority, or small majority of staff having required levels of Gaelic. This undermines the very ethos of a Gaelic school and ultimately the burden on Gaelic speaking staff is increased.”
That is a vicious circle, for the teacher in question—a fluent Gaelic speaker—confessed that he was seeking to leave teaching. However, the reasons that he gave were increased workload and erosion of pay—in other words, the same problems that are underlying the shortages in other key subjects, too. Until the Government addresses those fundamental issues of pay and workload, we have to be concerned about the practicalities of the welcome expansion of Gaelic-medium education to which the cabinet secretary referred.
We should welcome progress, but must acknowledge the challenges that remain. We can celebrate the third national plan, but the cabinet secretary is right to point out that it is only the precursor to an implementation strategy, which will have to address questions of targets and timescales if the momentum of progress is to be maintained.
In spite of my lack of any facility with Gaelic, when pressed on my favourite Scottish poet, I answer Sorley MacLean, even though I can only ever enjoy his work in translation. Seventy years ago, MacLean wrote the rather despairing lyric:
“I do not see the sense of my toil putting thoughts in a dying tongue”.
At least today we can perhaps tell ourselves that MacLean’s native tongue is no longer dying, but we must acknowledge that we have much more to do ere we can truly claim that it flourishes.
I move amendment S5M-11788.2 to insert at end:
“, and notes that the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 set up the framework for the National Gaelic Language Plan with the aim of growing the language usage to a point where it can be normalised.”
15:31Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.