More resources needed to teach an international Irish classroom
English is not the first language of about 6% of primary and second level pupils. At primary level, the ratio is more pronounced, at 7%.
However, when you consider that this is a national average, not including some of the smaller rural communities, it puts this in perspective.
In many urban areas, for example, the likelihood is that at least a handful of children in each class have come from another country or were born here into a household where English is not spoken fluently.
In some areas, international students account for as many as one-third of all those being taught.
The situation is influenced by a number of factors, but primarily by the influx of immigrant from Africa and eastern Europe since the late 1990s and more recently, by the growing inward migration to meet labour demands.
The Government spends €74 million a year providing language support teachers for schools. These staff take pupils in small classes for a number of hours each week to help increase their basic levels of English, the aim being to ensure they are in a position to learn at the same level as their classmates.
These newcomer children have brought new challenges to teachers, school managers and the Department of Education over the past few years.
While 1,250 language support teachers were in place during the last school year, around 879 of them in primary schools, this number is set to increase significantly over the next two years.
Under the Towards 2016 social partnership agreement, the department will provide an extra 550 language support teachers by 2009, most of them to be in place by next year. The resultant 1,800 will represent a doubling of such staff in Ireland’s 4,000 schools in just four years.
However, it has been the allocation of these staff to date which causes most frustration in the classrooms.
Education Minister Mary Hanafin has lifted a cap which meant that one language support teacher could be employed for every 14 international pupils, but up to a maximum of two.
The resource levels will be monitored and kept in line with the assessed needs of the school and its pupils under a new testing system notified to schools before the summer holidays.
The tests will determine the level of support each school needs from the expanded pool of language support staff.
This expansion of supports, estimated to cost an extra €32 million a year, has been welcomed by teachers and schools generally, although further efforts to help improve these students’ integration are being sought.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) believes that all school staff should be given training for working with students whose first language is not English.
For those who are working as language support teachers, the union believes an approved qualification should be held so schools can improve their capacity for pupils with little or no English.
“Appropriate adjustment to the curriculum, accompanied by the development of appropriate materials will also be an important feature accommodating newcomers. More detailed consideration of what adjustments might be made to the Junior and Leaving Certificates is also merited,” said TUI education and research officer Bernie Judge.
Another obstacle facing schools is their limited ability to recognise and build on what a student already taught overseas has learned in their homeland.
Ms Judge said that current systems are not designed to recognise previous knowledge and achievements across the full range of subjects.
“Any prior learning is effectively ignored, there is invariably an assumption that a student is beginning from scratch in most subjects, regardless of the prior education in other countries, but possible methods of tapping into this knowledge needs to be researched,” she said.
