Education is “critical” to the revitalisation of the Gaelic language, and Gaelic-medium education (GME) is an “enormous success story”, but the language needs to be “in everyday use” in communities if it is to survive and flourish, says Scotland’s new deputy first minister - who is also minister for Gaelic.
Kate Forbes, who was appointed deputy first minister by John Swinney earlier this month, today also told MSPs that she believes the goal must be for all secondary students leaving Gaelic-medium education to be fluent.
Ms Forbes made her comments at a meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee.
She said there has been much progress revitalising and supporting Gaelic over the past 20 years. However, she said that the focus on “Gaelic plans and education has perhaps not always given due recognition to people and communities - and, at the end of the day, Gaelic thrives in communities”.
Responding to the Scottish Conservatives’ education spokesperson, Liam Kerr, she also said she would like “100 per cent” of GME secondary education leavers to have “functional fluency”.
Mr Kerr had highlighted that the Comunn na Gàidhlig target is that 90 per cent of GME school leavers are fluent.
But Ms Forbes said: “I think the figure should be 100 per cent in terms of young people leaving Gaelic-medium education.”
Ms Forbes, who is MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch and is herself a product of Gaelic-medium education, highlighted that she had “done quite well” acquiring the language in school and had sat her Advanced Higher. Still, she said, she would not count herself as “native fluent”.
In order to improve students’ fluency, she acknowledged that there was “a bigger challenge” to be addressed and that was about opportunities to speak the language “outside the classroom”.
Supporting the Gaelic language
Young people need to be able to speak Gaelic at home, in the community and also in work, she said.
“I think with language we all know, as English speakers, that fluency in academic terms alone is not always sufficient to ensure that a young person continues with that fluency throughout the rest of their lives, and then perhaps passes it on to the next generation,” Ms Forbes said.
Highlighting the latest census figures, published yesterday, Ms Forbes said she did not believe Gaelic was in crisis but she said urgent action was needed.
Scotland’s Census shows that 2.5 per cent of people aged 3 and over had some skills in Gaelic in 2022 - an increase of 43,100 people since 2011, when 1.7 per cent had some skills in Gaelic.
In the Western Isles Council area the majority had some Gaelic skills (57.2 per cent), which was far higher than other council areas. However, the census also shows that in the Western Isles, while 52 per cent reported speaking Gaelic in 2011, the figure was 45 per cent in 2022.
Ms Forbes said the increase in Gaelic skills overall was “to be celebrated” and “fantastic” but she said the reduction in Gaelic speakers in the Western Isles “should be a wake-up call in terms of how we approach supporting these communities”.
She said: “The outcome I would like to see is breadth and depth of Gaelic. By breadth I mean number of speakers, by depth [I mean] that it is a living, breathing language. In other words it’s not just an academic language of the classroom, it’s a language that is used by people working in communities - by plumbers and electricians, by teachers and shopkeepers, and so on.
“It is currently used in that way in communities and we need to ensure that there is a community-wide approach to preserving the language.”
Ms Forbes was giving evidence to the committee on new legislation , the Scottish Languages Bill, designed to support Scots and Gaelic.
She said the legislation, which would give parents the right to request pre-school Gaelic-medium education, building on the current right to request primary GME, was a “critical part” of what was required but not “everything that we need”.
Gaelic campaigners have criticised the legislation for not going far enough. Wilson McLeod, emeritus professor of Gaelic at the University of Edinburgh, said it was “profoundly disappointing” that the right to GME was “again omitted” from the proposed new law.
In its written response to the bill, Western Isles Council said “education by itself will not guarantee the future of Gàidhlig as a living, developing, widely used language” and that “the main emphasis of the bill should be directed towards reviving Gàidhlig in community settings”.
However, the authority also said the bill required “strengthening in relation to education if the underlying challenges of teacher recruitment and retention, the right to Gàidhlig-medium education and expansion of current provision in areas of increasing demand are to be addressed strategically and effectively”.
The authority also pointed out that funding for Gaelic had remained relatively static since 2010-11 and the bill was being introduced “at a time when even the most supportive of local authorities are having to consider reducing spending on Gàidhlig markedly”.
In 2020 Western Isles Council made Gaelic the default language for pupils entering P1; by 2022 more P1s were entering GME than English-medium education.
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