Hansard

I am Fionnlagh MacLeod. I work with Comhairle Nan Sgoiltean Araich, the Gaelic Playgroups Association. We are a national organisation, working throughout Scotland. CNSA was established 20 years ago. At that time, there were only four pre-school Gaelic groups, but in the past 20 years that number has risen dramatically to 140 groups that cater for more than 2,500 children.

Over the years there have been many changes to Gaelic pre-school education, as to pre-school education in general. Most of them have been excellent, although some have not been so good; with every good change comes a bad change. One of the positive changes has been that local authorities now establish pre-school groups, which is excellent. However, the problem is that we have passed groups on to local authorities that are not so keen to open Gaelic pre-school groups. They have not created any new groups; they have simply taken over the ones that we had established. That worries us, as we do not recognise the kind of development that we would like, and the language does not gain any advantage from it.

We look after children between the ages of one month and three years on the mainland of Scotland. Until now, we were working with children aged between one month and five years, but we have lost three quarters of the children between the ages of three and five to the new nurseries that have been established by local authorities.

It takes more than 2,000 hours to bring a child who does not speak Gaelic to fluency in the language. I know that you are talking about education in general, and languages such as French and German. I ask you to think about the way in which languages are taught—not just Gaelic, but other languages besides. In the next year, we expect that we will reduce the number of hours that it takes to learn Gaelic from 2,000 to 1,000, so that more children will be fluent in Gaelic. New teaching methods will be useful not only in this country, but all over the world, and we have an advantage in that the children speak Gaelic before they go to school. We hope that children who enter nursery schools at the age of three, even if they come from non-Gaelic speaking homes, will be fluent in Gaelic, through the use of teaching methods that are not used elsewhere. As we say in English, we are at the cutting edge, and those who work in education elsewhere in Scotland do not know of the methods that we are using to help children to become fluent Gaelic speakers.

We would like English to be mentioned in the bill. We would also like Gaelic to be mentioned in the bill. It is unnatural to publish a bill of this sort without mentioning the languages with which we are working, especially as we are now part of Europe. I hope that in the years to come we will teach not only through English and Gaelic, but through Spanish, German and other languages. The biggest problem that we have is that the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 did not mention Gaelic. What happened after that? There were Gaelic schools at that time, but the Gaelic was quashed and practically killed because it was not mentioned in the act. From our perspective, it is very important that this bill should look into the minds of people who are working in education in Scotland.

There is another reason that we want Gaelic and English to be mentioned. We know that many officers who work in local authorities are against the Gaelic language; we meet them week after week. That does not happen higher up, where people have access to education and learning. If Gaelic were mentioned in the bill, officers who work at local authority level would not be able to say that their authority has nothing to do with Gaelic because they do not have it in their nursery schools. Some £250,000 was allocated to nursery schools but, when we speak to officers in local authorities, they can say that Gaelic is not mentioned in legislation, that it does not come into their work and that they need something in writing about Gaelic.

I have worked with officers in the local authorities and with councils. We do not worry about those officers who are supportive of the language, but we worry about those who are opposed to it and who would say, "If Gaelic is so important, why is it not mentioned in the bill?" It is important not only for pre-school children but for children at every other level that Gaelic should be mentioned in the bill. If it is not mentioned, we will not have the right to have a say in teaching methods and how we promote the language.

We are talking about education through the language. If a child works at mathematics through Gaelic, that is education. If children do history, geography or any other subject through the medium of Gaelic, they are learning, taking in information, thinking for themselves and passing on that information. It is all education. It is not just a subject. That is the view that I want to promote at this meeting.