‘Teachers should have say in language aid’

TEACHERS should have an input into the level of school support needed by children whose first language is not English, according to an expert working with dozens of such pupils in an inner-city primary school.

Rory McDaid is a language support teacher at St Gabriel’s National School in Dublin’s north inner-city, where about a third of the 200-plus pupils are from minority language backgrounds. He is also studying for a doctorate on the topic of first languages in school at St Patrick’s College in Dublin.

While he supports the provision of greater resources to schools with a mix of pupils from different nationalities, he believes each child’s need can be very different.