SNP boosts Gaelic education in languages bill
SNP ministers have given parents across Scotland the right to demand a Gaelic school in their area, despite only about 1 per cent of the population speaking the language.
Kate Forbes, the Deputy First Minister, said parents anywhere in the country could make a request for a school where the curriculum is taught through the medium of Gaelic.
Councils would be required to assess if the request was 'practical and affordable' under provisions contained in a new Scottish Languages Bill.
After taking advice, ministers might direct local authorities to proceed with the new school if assessment deemed it to be viable.
But Stephen Kerr, a Scottish Tory MSP, said the plan was 'a staggering misjudgement of priorities' and 'a blatant example of the SNP chasing ideological vanity projects'.
Scotland's most recent census, conducted in 2022, found there were only 58,000 Gaelic speakers. This equates to 1.1 per cent of the population, with half living in the Western Isles.
The last monolingual Gaelic speakers died about 50 years ago, but successive Labour and SNP-led Scottish governments have tried to encourage more children and adults to learn the language.
Ms Forbes's announcement came after it emerged in April that the number of modern language teachers in Scotland has dropped by nearly a quarter since 2008, the year after the SNP came to power.
Over this period, the number of French teachers has plummeted by 44.2 per cent, while the number teaching German has fallen by 63.3 per cent. There were 66 German teachers in all Scottish schools – a record low.
Scotland has also fallen down international league tables for literacy, with pupils dropping behind their English counterparts in reading and writing.
Unveiling the new plan at Inverness Gaelic Primary School, Ms Forbes said: 'This Bill aims to build a strong foundation to support Gaelic's continued growth following an encouraging increase in Gaelic speakers and learners across Scotland.
'It would boost Gaelic education provision throughout Scotland, and better establish Gaelic and Scots as national languages.
'Gaelic medium education enriches communities and offers good value for money. Gaelic medium schools frequently demonstrate above-average performance, with some local authorities showing better grades across all qualification levels despite costs being no greater than English medium schools.'
The Bill will also introduce educational standards for Gaelic and Scots, establish them both as 'official languages' and support the 'creation of areas of linguistic significance in Gaelic communities'.
But Mr Kerr was critical, saying: 'Scotland's education system is in a state of serious decline – standards in literacy and numeracy are falling, teachers are overstretched, and far too many pupils are being failed.
'Yet the SNP Government thinks the priority is to open Gaelic schools in areas where Gaelic isn't spoken as an everyday language. This is a staggering misjudgement of priorities.
'It's a blatant example of the SNP chasing ideological vanity projects instead of addressing the real problems facing Scotland's classrooms.'
'Dismal record on languages'
Miles Briggs, the Scottish Conservative shadow education secretary, said: 'This should not deflect SNP ministers from ignoring their dismal record on other languages, given they have presided over the loss of hundreds of modern language teachers.
'Together with their failure to eradicate the attainment gap, and an alarming rise in violence in our classrooms, these plans cannot neglect the urgent need to reverse the decline the SNP's policies have caused in Scotland's schools.'
Bilingual signs have been erected in Scotland since the 1990s, after first being approved by Donald Dewar when he was Scottish secretary under Tony Blair, before becoming the first first minister following devolution.
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