Trends in Irish-Medium Education in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
since 1920: shifting agents and explanations
Sara McAdory and Jan Germen Janmaat
Some recent studies have suggested a significant bottom-up or parental component to recent
movements for autochthonous minority language-medium education (MLME). This study takes
MLME as the outcome of interest and seeks to explain trends in Irish-medium education (IME) in
the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland since 1920—a unique opportunity for double
comparison over space and time—as an example of MLME. A comparison of data from
government statistical reports in the Republic of Ireland, and from government publications and
previous studies in Northern Ireland, shows markedly different trends in IME before 1970 but
convergence in patterns since. Theoretical analyses suggest that theories focusing on the
individual are more valid for explaining trends from the 1970s, while those focusing on the
collective have more explanatory power regarding trends from the 1920s to the 1970s. This
supports the idea that the initiative for heritage language instruction has shifted from the state and
other 'official' agents to grassroots agents such as parents. At the same time, it raises the question
of whether the new positive trend in IME is lasting, or just a fad that can be easily exchanged for
a new marker of distinction by aspiring social groups.
Keywords: Irish-language policy, minority language education, Irish-medium education,
minority languages, Gaelscoileanna, Irish language
I. Introduction
Autochthonous minority language-medium education provision has been
compared across a variety of cases and has been approached from angles ranging from
the pedagogical to the attitudinal to the sociolinguistic. This study takes minority
language medium-education (MLME) as the outcome of interest and seeks to explain
trends in Irish-medium education (IME) as an example of MLME. While some studies
have suggested that recent movements for MLME have a significant bottom-up or
parental component (Rogers and McLeod 2007, Jones and Martin-Jones 2004), nobody in
the field has approached this question by undertaking a double comparison in both space
and time. By comparing the cases of IME in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
since partition in 1920, we will provide more solid evidence for the insight that the
1
initiative for heritage language instruction has shifted from the state and other 'official'
agents to grassroots agents such as parents.
The Irish language has been spoken on the island of Ireland for at least 2,000
years and was the predominant language of the island’s people for most of their history,
until changes wrought by the coming of English settlers during the Tudor period caused
the language to decline. By 1920, native Irish-speaking communities were largely
confined to areas in the far west of the island, called the Gaeltacht. Since this time, the
government of the Republic of Ireland has made efforts at language revitalisation, but
with limited success (see Crystal 2002, May 2012).
Education through the medium of autochthonous minority languages such as Irish
has become more popular in recent decades. For example, education through the medium
of Welsh, often cited as a success story in language revitalisation, originated during the
first half of the twentieth century but has grown rapidly and increasingly attracted
students from English-speaking homes in recent decades (May 2000, Lewis 2008).
Education through the mediums of Breton in France and Gaelic in Scotland has also
become increasingly institutionalised (Rogers and McLeod 2007). In Aotearoa/New
Zealand, Māori-medium education dates from 1982 (May and Hill 2005). Similarly, in
Spain, Basque and Catalan have become increasingly common as mediums of education
in their respective regions, both among autochthones and allochthones, in the case of
Basque, based on parental choice (Vila i Moreno 2008, Cenoz 2008).
With this burgeoning of MLME has come a concomitant increase in research on
the topic, including some comparative studies. May (2000) has examined institutional
and attitudinal difficulties in Welsh language policy. Heller (1994, 2010) has approached
2
French-medium education in Canada from an ethnographic and historical perspective. Ó
Riagáin (2007) has studied the relationship between attitudes and socio-religious
identities in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in addition to his earlier work
(1997) on the relationship between language policy and social reproduction in Ireland.
Some of this research has examined reasons behind the growth of minority
language-medium education in various locales. Rogers and McLeod (2007), for example,
have investigated how the development of public Breton- and Gaelic-medium education
has been influenced by policy and politics in Brittany and Scotland, respectively, and
found that although the situations differ in many ways, a grassroots element was
important in both. Similarly, Ó Riagáin (1997, 24), with reference to the Republic of
Ireland, writes that
… recent establishments [of Irish-medium schools] differ in significant respects from the
earlier generation of all-Irish schools. They were founded in response to parent groups
rather than state pressure and they are, by and large, additions to the school system rather
than reconversions of the existing schools to bilingual teaching.
The cases of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland share many similarities
that make them good candidates for a comparison using the logic of the Most Similar
Systems Design (Landman 2008). The basic idea of this design is that selecting cases that
differ in the outcome of interest but that otherwise are as similar as possible should
facilitate the identification of factor(s) that can explain the variation in the outcome.
Although operating as separate polities for almost 100 years, the Republic of Ireland and
Northern Ireland existed as a single administrative unit under the auspices of Great
Britain for centuries until partition under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Thus, in
spite of the diverging political trajectories ever since, the two polities share not only a
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common heritage language but also similar histories and cultures. Furthermore, the fact
that these two polities have operated under separate and distinct political systems since
1920 makes any similarities in IME that much more remarkable, as it helps to eliminate
the political situation as a major influence on the outcome.
This paper will argue that the impetus for IME has shifted from the state to
parents, or from a collective to an individual basis, and demonstrate this by comparing
the provision of primary and secondary-level IME in the Republic of Ireland and
Northern Ireland since 1920 and testing this data against several collectivist and
individualist theories. Data for the Republic of Ireland is mainly drawn from annual
statistical reports published by the Department of Education and Skills of the Republic of
Ireland, while data on Northern Ireland comes from various sources, including
government publications and previous studies. It should be noted that in addition to allIrish schools, others have taught partially through Irish; however, all-Irish schools have
been chosen for examination in this paper because they would seem to indicate the
deepest level of dedication to IME, and because the statistics are more comparable
between time periods and polities.
Collective Theories
Cultural Division of Labour
Theories that can be loosely termed ‘collective’ have been used to explain aspects
of the histories of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, including the situation of
the Irish language. Hechter’s (1978) cultural division of labour, along with the related
idea of internal colonialism (Hechter [1975] 1999), is one such theory. The cultural
4
division of labour is the idea that when cleavages based on salient cultural markers—
especially language, skin color, or religion—coincide with socio-economic divides, the
solidarity of culturally distinct disadvantaged groups in particular is likely to increase
(Hechter 1978). In industrial societies a person’s occupation is the main indicator of
socioeconomic status and an important determinant of one’s social contacts (Hechter
1978).
Often, a cultural division of labour has been the result of internal colonialism,
which occurs when industrialisation sweeps unevenly across a state, allowing the core to
dominate peripheral regions, which become economically dependent on the core (Hechter
[1975] 1999); when these peripheral regions are inhabited primarily by people of a
different ethnic group from the core, a cultural division of labour is the inevitable result
as this group takes up lower-paying jobs in a sector determined by the internal colonialist
situation. This, according to Hechter, is the situation that arose in unified Ireland under
Britain in the centuries leading up to partition in 1920, and that continues, arguably, in
Northern Ireland today (Byrne and Irvin 2002).
Although a cultural division of labour begins by penalizing members of one group
for their cultural markers, including language, these markers can eventually become the
basis for socialization, political mobilisation, and the often concomitant cultural rebirths
(Hechter [1975] 1999). Indeed, drives to promote or revitalise a heritage language, such
as IME, are often concomitant with these cultural rebirths (Spolsky 2010, 174). Thus, in
the Republic of Ireland, where the cultural division of labour continued until 1920, we
would expect, on the basis of Hechter’s theory, to find a high level of solidarity as well as
a likelihood of political or cultural mobilisation among Catholics (a common label for
5
those who would identify as ethnically or culturally Irish as opposed to British Protestant;
see Maguire (1991, 15)) in the years leading up to independence. This trend would
probably continue for at least some time after independence, given that the independence
movement’s leaders took prominent government roles. This suggests a high level of
support for IME during this time along with, after independence, the means of realising
it. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, we would expect high levels of solidarity and a
likelihood of political or cultural mobilisation among Catholics up to the present, with an
accompanying drive for IME, although its realisation might be hampered by political
realities.
Nationalism
A global trend with a collective element, the ideology of nationalism, could also cast light
on trends in IME. Nationalism is widely seen as a major contributor to the Irish language
revival movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Williams 2010,
238-239). Indeed, it would be surprising if the government of the independent Irish state
after 1922, a result of a nationalist movement, did not institute policies to support the
legitimacy and revitalisation of the national language. However, after World War II,
Western Europe saw a ‘temporary demise of nationalism’ due to its association with Nazi
Germany (Hoffmann 1966, 870). Thus, we would expect an IME to be more prevalent in
the decades following independence and less prevalent after World War II.
Individualist Theories
6
Other theories that could account for the distribution of Irish-medium education
provision have in common a focus on individual rather than collective values.
Bourdieu’s Linguistic Market
According to Bourdieu (1991), language choices basically work on a market
principle. Elites’ (generally unconscious) choices about language use are an attempt to
maintain their position as elites; their language choices become socially valuable because
these high-status group members are the only ones who can speak the code flawlessly.
This results in the upwardly mobile imitating elites’ language use, which then leads elites
to make new language choices in order to maintain their linguistic distinctions. This
mechanism could help explain the shift from Irish to English in past centuries and could
also explain trends in Irish-medium education as changes occur in the social value of the
Irish language. Bourdieu does not seem to specify that the language choices made by the
elite and upwardly mobile must have cultural significance to the group; the only
requirement is that the language choice enables distinction for the elites and imitation for
the upwardly mobile.
While in the distant past, almost everyone on the island spoke Irish; and in the
more recent past, Irish was seen as the language of the rural poor; today, even in the
Republic of Ireland, few people use Irish frequently outside the education system
(Government of Ireland 2012, 40) and those who study it as a subject in English-medium
schools increasingly fail to reach competence (Harris 2008, Harris et al. 2006). The use
of Irish is even lower in Northern Ireland (Mac Giolla Chríost 2006). Thus, Irish
proficiency and Irish-medium education—not exactly the same thing, but still a form of
7
cultural capital—could be seen as choices made by the elite to distinguish themselves or
by the upwardly mobile imitating the elite. Given this, we would expect that as the Irish
language became further removed from the ‘common man’, increasing numbers,
especially of the elite and upwardly mobile, would begin opting to learn Irish as a
distinguishing characteristic in both polities.
Personal Cultural System
Another individualistic theory is Smolicz’s idea of core cultural values, or, more
specifically, his related concept of the personal cultural system. Core cultural values
‘generally represent the heartland of [a group’s] ideological system and act as identifying
values which are symbolic of the group and its membership’ (Smolicz 1981, 75);
language and religion are two of the most common. Core cultural values tend to become
most salient when a group experiences external pressure or outsiders attempt to change
traditional culture (Smolicz 1981, 77). Thus, core cultural values would seem to operate
on a collective level.
However, Smolicz (1981, 1988) maintains that an individual creates a personal
cultural system by selecting from among the core cultural values available in a society—
whether those of his or her own cultural group or of others in a plural society—to rank
cultural values in a way that best suits the individual’s interests. Smolicz (1988, 392) sees
this as an attempt to maintain a link to one’s cultural heritage while successfully
navigating the political, economic, and social realities with which one is faced. The
concept of the personal cultural system would suggest that during times when it was more
advantageous (however this is understood) to maintain one’s link to one’s cultural
heritage through an ancestral language—in this case Irish—education through the
8
medium of that language would be more popular.
While Bourdieu and Smolicz both invoke the interests of a group as a prime
motive of language choice, their theories differ on two important points. First, culture is
rather irrelevant to Bourdieu’s theory, while for Smolicz’s, culture joins interest as the
basis for one’s choices. Secondly, Smolicz does not mention social class or social
mobility in connection with the personal cultural system—in fact, he does not specify
whether the interests he invokes are social, cultural, or economic, except insofar as they
are ‘a mediator between the culture of the group and the private world of the individual’
(Smolicz 1980, 7) whose interests in the wider society may differ from those of the
group.
Given the concepts of core cultural values and the personal cultural system, we
would expect that a group as a whole would embrace cultural values most tightly during
times of outside pressure, such as in the decades before independence in the Republic of
Ireland and continuing to the present in Northern Ireland. That the Irish chose
Catholicism rather than language as core cultural value makes sense from the perspective
of this theory as the out-group pressure for a long time primarily concerned religion—at
least until 1829, when finally the subordinate position of Catholics was abolished in the
British Empire. However, the theory cannot explain why throughout the remainder of the
nineteenth century language did not become a more prominent cultural value as the Irish
language was pushed back further and further in the rural periphery by English. In any
case, in the Irish State after 1922, decreased pressure on Catholicism, perhaps coupled in
more recent decades with Church scandals, may have created a more prominent place in
the personal cultural systems of some for Irish. Furthermore, in Northern Ireland, while
9
pressure on Catholicism has continued, developments in the situation coupled with
changes in the perception of the church could have opened up room for language in some
individuals’ personal cultural systems, leading to an increase in IME.
Neoliberalism and Glocalisation
Like nationalism discussed earlier, the rise of neoliberalism and glocalisation are
global trends that could give another perspective on trends in IME. The latter part of the
twentieth century saw increasing globalisation, or the reorganisation of the world due to
the increasing instantaneity of communication, travel and trade (Held et al. 1999).
Counterintuitively, one result has been that ‘increasingly, the local is couched in
universalistic terms, or tied to global networks’ (Boli 2005, 385). This idea can be termed
glocalisation, or ‘the tailoring … of goods and services on a global or near-global basis to
increasingly differentiated local … markets’ (Robertson 1995, 28), markets which are
often constructed specifically to increase sales. As Robertson (1995, 29) puts it, ‘diversity
sells’ and can become ‘a significant basis of cultural capital formation’. This universal
commodification, including of education, can be seen as an outcome of neoliberal trends
that swept much of the world in the 1980s (Brancaleone and O’Brien 2011). From this
perspective, IME can be seen as a local incarnation of the growing global interest in
autochthonous minority language education during the last few decades, and we would
expect to find it in both polities during this period.
III. Republic of Ireland: trends from the 1920s
10
Before independence, some children in rural parts of Ireland where Irish was
widely spoken were taught partially through Irish under the Bilingual Programme of
Education instituted in 1906 (see O'Donoghue 2006).
However, the government that took control of independent Ireland in 1922
immediately began working toward the goal of a compulsory program of education
through the medium of Irish. This policy was driven largely by the widely held idea that
the education system under British Rule had been responsible for the decline of Irish.
This system had for the most part proscribed the Irish language from the classroom.
Because education had (in people’s minds) been responsible for the decline of Irish, the
reasoning went, the education system could also fix the problem (Kelly 2002). The
details on Irish in the government statistical reports, which provide the primary data
source for this section, reflect the intensity with which the government undertook this
project.
From 1922, the new government began requiring Irish as a subject in all standards
(i.e. grade levels) in primary schools. Kelly (2002, 15) writes that all arguments
supporting this policy related to the historic and cultural significance of the Irish
language, rather than to ‘economic or social development, the areas of life of most
immediate concern to the people’. Soon, policies for IME began to appear. Early
government reports on education statistics discuss this topic at length; for example, the
1924-25 report outlines the plan, and expected success, of the government’s policy to
require infant (i.e. kindergarten) classes to teach using the ‘direct method’ (i.e. through
Irish) while older classes in places where English was the predominant language would
learn most of their subjects through English and the rest through Irish until students’
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grasp of Irish was strong enough to reverse this order (Saorstat Eireann 1926, 23-24).
Presumably as a result of these efforts, by 1933-34, 7.3 percent of primary schools
taught primarily through the medium of Irish; by 1938-39, this figure reached a high of
13.7 percent, when 704 schools were classified as all-Irish. Through the end of the 1940s,
the figure hovered between 10 and 13 percent.
Although relatively few primary school students continued on to secondary
education during the 1920s, the government also strongly promoted the use of Irish in
these institutions through a three-tiered payment system established in 1924 (Kelly 2002).
In Class A schools, Irish was used as the medium of instruction and for everyday
operations; in class B schools, Irish was used as a medium of instruction for some
classes; and in class C schools, Irish was taught as a subject only (Kelly 2002, 61). In
1941, however, the government reduced the amount of these grants (Kelly 2002, 63-64).
The decline that took place in the numbers of Irish-medium schools seems not to be
directly related to this reduction of funding; rather, it seems to line up with the expansion
of secondary education which only accelerated in 1967 when post-primary education
became free. In any case, by that time, enrolment in secondary schools had already
increased almost four-fold since the early years after independence (O'Connor 1986, 141155, 191-192).
In the early 1950s, Irish-medium education in the Republic of Ireland began to
decline. By 1952-53, the percentage of primary schools teaching entirely through Irish
had declined to 10 percent; the next year saw a further drop, to 7.8 percent. This same
year, the number of schools in the Galltacht (areas with fewer native Irish speakers)
teaching through Irish halved from 183 in 1952-53 to 91 in 1953-54, while the number of
12
Gaeltacht schools decreased only slightly. The Galltacht figure returned to the 150s by
1956 and remained over 100 until the mid-1960s, but this was likely the result of a
reclassification of certain Gaeltacht areas as Galltacht areas in the mid 1950s (Ó Riagáin
1997). In any case, the percentage of all-Irish primary schools in the Republic of Ireland
continued to decrease until reaching a low of 4.9 percent in 1976-77 and hovering at this
level for several years. Irish-medium secondary schools, including vocational and
comprehensive/community schools, reached a low of 26, or 3.2 percent, in the early
1980s.
It was not until the mid-1980s that the number of Irish-medium schools began to
increase again substantially. From 4.9 percent, or a low of 161 schools, in 1981-82, the
figures for Irish-medium primary schools have increased more or less steadily to a high
of 7.9 percent (250 schools) in 2009-2010. Figures for the 2012-2013 school year
indicate that 7.8 percent of Irish primary schools, or 246 institutions, are Irish medium.
The number of secondary IM schools has also increased to the current high of 45 (6.2
percent), which has remained steady since 2007 (Department of Education and Skills
2013).
Figures for Irish-medium primary schools show not only changes in the numbers
of such institutions but also changes in their locations. From the beginning, such schools
were located more heavily in the rural, more heavily Irish-speaking Gaeltacht than in the
Galltacht, which includes most urban areas in the Republic of Ireland. Figure 1 illustrates
how, after early heights, IM primary school numbers fell more rapidly in the Galltacht
than the Gaeltacht through the mid-1970s, before beginning to climb again from around
1980 while Gaeltacht numbers continued to fall for the next three decades. In 1997-98,
13
the share of IM schools in the Galltacht passed that of the Gaeltacht for the first time,
with 113 schools to the Gaeltacht’s 110. In 2012-2013, 58 percent of IM schools, or 142,
were located in the Galltacht, while only 42 percent, or 104, were located in the
Gaeltacht. Furthermore, the patterns of IM secondary schools in the Gaeltacht and
Galltacht reflect those of primary schools, albeit more weakly, as such figures are only
available from the mid-1990s (Department of Education and Skills 1923-2013). It is
important to remember that the proportion of schools teaching through Irish is still higher
in the Gaeltacht than in the Galltacht, as the total number of schools (and pupils) in the
Gaeltacht is much smaller.
Figure 1 about here
Statistics on student numbers in IME, important given the relative rurality of
many Gaeltacht schools, show the same trends.
In any case, the shape of Irish-medium education at both levels seems clear: After
a rapid increase with the strong support of the government of newly independent Ireland,
centered more heavily in the Gaeltacht, the numbers of Irish-medium schools and
students fell over several decades, especially in the Galltacht. However, Irish-medium
education began to rise again in the latter decades of the twentieth century, driven
primarily by an increase in the number of IM schools in the Galltacht, and this growth
has continued to the present, especially at the primary level.
A number of reasons for these trends have been put forward. Kelly (2002, 47-48)
writes that opposition to Irish-medium education began building in the 1930s from both
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political parties, especially the Fine Gael party, as well as from the primary-level
teacher’s union, the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO). The basis for this
opposition was the belief that the policy was both educationally unsound and detrimental
to language revival efforts. The Department of Education’s failure to investigate the
effects of these policies during the 1930s reinforced the opposition, as did its subsequent
dismissal of the results of studies in the early 1940s that found that teachers saw the
policy as unbeneficial to children and that the children were not old enough to benefit
from such teaching (Kelly 2002, 49-53).
During the 1950s, the balance of political power changed as Fianna Fail’s
political dominance ended and a Fine Gael member was appointed as minister of
education in 1948. With this came a shift in the Department of Education’s attitude, and
as a result, research was carried out on the topic. This led to several policy changes, one
of which was permitting the teaching of English for half an hour daily in infant classes
(Kelly 2002, 54-55). In 1960, the Department of Education put out a circular that
essentially served as ‘an invitation to teachers to abandon teaching through Irish’
(O'Connor 1986, 44). The circular emphasised achievement in spoken Irish over written
Irish and allowed teachers to decide for themselves whether students’ skills in spoken
Irish—the chief point on which teachers would be assessed—would benefit more from
conversation classes than from Irish-medium teaching (O'Connor 1986, 44-45).
As we have seen, the number of Irish-medium schools began to increase again in
the 1970s. Ó Riagáin (1997, 24) suggests that this surge in Irish-medium schools is not so
much a reversal of the decline but the start of a new trend. In fact, whereas early Irishmedium schools had been created at the mandate of the government, some of the new
15
Irish-medium schools had to take the Minister of Education to court in the 1990s in order
to gain recognition from the state (Ó Laoire 2008, 224). Furthermore, at least among the
urban, Dublin-area schools surveyed by Ó Riagáin and Ó Gliasáin (1979), a high
percentage of fathers—51 percent—had jobs as government or semi-state employees,
suggesting an overall higher socioeconomic status compared with the general population.
Kennedy (2012) later found in a survey of parents whose children attended two Irishmedium and three English-medium schools in the Republic of Ireland (as well as two
English-medium schools in Northern Ireland) that the parents of 8-year-olds in the IM
schools were more likely to have attended college than parents whose children attended
the EM schools, although no such difference was seen among parents of 12-year-olds in
IME. He also found no significant difference in income level between parents whose
children of either age attended IM or EM schools in the Republic of Ireland. However,
the studies by both Ó Riagáin and Ó Gliasáin (1979) and Kennedy (2012) contained a
limited number of schools; thus, these results must be viewed with caution. Indeed,
Kennedy suggests, following Borooah, Dineen, and Lynch (2009), that little or no
systematic research has been conducted on the socioeconomic status of primary or
secondary IME attendees and that the elitist reputations of such institutions are based on
anecdote or opinion. On the other hand, Watson and Nic Ghiolla Phádraig (2011)
maintain (albeit without solid quantitative evidence) that attendees of Gaelscoileanna
have a higher level of cultural capital than the average student, and particularly than
students from Irish-medium schools inside the Gaeltacht.
Indeed, at the preprimary level, Hickey (1997, 35-39) found in a large, nationwide
survey of parents of children attending naíonraí, or Irish-medium preschools, that while
16
the group was ‘not a homogenous educated elite’, the parents had, overall, significantly
higher education levels than the general population of parents. She also found that
naíonra parents have in general a higher occupational status, an effect more pronounced
in the Galltacht, although again, a significant number were involved in manual
occupations.
Furthermore, Coady and Ó Laoire (2002) also found that, compared with the
1970s, an increasing number of students in IME primary schools came from Englishspeaking homes, from about 75 percent in the 1970s (see Cummins, 1974 in Coady and Ó
Laoire, 2002) to more than 90 percent in 2000.
While O’Doherty had maintained in 1958 that the compulsory-policy neglected
‘pedagogical, psychological, and social’ factors for the sake of ‘emotional, political, and
historical’ ones (in Kelly 2002, 57), the new trend has seemed to be based more on the
former than the latter. The website and publications from Gaelscoileanna Teo, a
prominent group promoting the development of Irish-medium education, seem to show
this; they emphasise the educational and other benefits of Irish-medium education while
stating more than once that they welcome children from all cultural backgrounds—even
to the point of providing brochures not only in Irish and English but also in French,
Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Romanian (Gaelscoileanna Teo. 2013, Gaelscoileanna
Teo n.d.). Parental motivations, at least at schools surveyed by Ó Riagáin and Ó Gliasáin
(1979), also support this, with 63 percent of parents giving both language- and educationbased reasons for choosing their child’s Irish-medium school (see also Ó Riagáin 1997,
212).
IV. Northern Ireland: trends from the 1920s
17
Irish-medium education emerged later in Northern Ireland than in the Republic of
Ireland. Presumably because of this, as well as the lower degree of government support,
statistics for Northern Ireland are less plentiful and broad. However, supplementing
government documents with information from several researchers and pro-IM groups, a
clear picture develops.
The first Irish-medium school in Northern Ireland was founded in the Shaw’s
Road community in Belfast by a group of Catholic parents who had learned Irish as
adults and decided to raise their families through Irish. Although this had been done
already by a few families scattered throughout Belfast, this group of parents, mostly of
working-class origins, wanted to create a community where Irish would be the natural
language of interaction. In the 1960s, they bought a plot of land on the edge of heavily
Catholic West Belfast and proceeded to build homes there. Schools are a vital part of
most communities, so in 1971, these parents, despite government opposition, opened the
first Irish-medium primary school in Northern Ireland with nine students (Maguire 1991,
Ó Baoill 2007). Maguire (1991, 71) writes that the Bunscoil’s founding families viewed
IME as ‘a basic human right which would never be granted [by the government] and
must be realised by themselves’.
Even before the families moved into Shaw’s Road homes, they had been working
on securing government recognition for the Bunscoil (primary school), without success.
In fact, not until April 1976, more than five years after opening, did the school receive
temporary recognition as an independent school, and it was 1979 before it was able to
register fully as an independent school. Maintained status, entitling the school to financial
help such as teacher salaries and per capita funding, was granted in 1984, ending a saga
18
that, from the point of view of Maguire (1991, 78-80), resulted from ‘ill-concealed
cultural hostilities on the part of the authorities’.
Around this time, other Irish-medium schools had begun to appear, all lacking
government support at founding. Although the Irish stream set up in 1983 at Steelstown
Primary School in Derry/Londonderry was granted immediate funding before developing
into a free-standing maintained school with in ten years (Iontaobhas na Gaelscolaíochta
n.d.), schools not begun as streams in English-medium schools did not receive the same
advantage. Gaelscoil na bhFál, for example, which opened in the late 1980s, received
funding in 1992 (Department of Education Northern Ireland 2008, 14); Bunscoil
Cholmcille in Derry/Londonderry opened in 1985 and became funded in 1995; and
Bunscoil an Iúir in Newry, which opened in 1987, received funding in 1997 (O'Reilly
1999, 22).
The Irish-medium sector continued to grow during the 1990s. In 1971, Northern
Ireland’s only Irish-medium primary school had housed only nine pupils. By 2002-2003,
25 Irish-medium schools and units within otherwise English-medium schools enrolled
3,250 students (Ó Baoill 2007, 412, Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta n.d.-b). From 2004 to
2009, the number of schools fluctuated between 31 and 32 (Comhairle na
Gaelscolaíochta n.d.-b). In 2012-2013, there were 28 stand-alone Irish-medium primary
schools and 7 Irish-medium units in otherwise English-medium primary schools;
together, these 35 schools educated 3,055 pupils through Irish (Department of Education
n.d.).
In spite of this enormous increase, Irish-medium schools continued to face
difficulties, particularly from the Department of Education, at least into the 1990s. These
19
challenges are most clearly evidenced in the case of the first successfully established
Irish-medium secondary school in Northern Ireland, Meánscoil Feirste (now Coláiste
Feirste). The first IM secondary school remained open for only two years before shutting
after parents decided it was unsustainable.
The organisers who opened Meánscoil Feirste in 1991 had expected to receive
funding rapidly, since by this time, the funding process for IM primary schools had
become easier (O'Reilly 1999, 126-127). However, they were mistaken. Although the
school doubled its intake every year during its first three years, enrolment remained short
of the 300 pupils, or 60 pupils per year, required for funding by the Department of
Education.
Supporters of the school accused the Department of Education of prejudice and
discrimination against Irish speakers and contrasted the situation of Irish-medium schools
in Northern Ireland with those of Welsh-medium schools in Wales and Gaelic-medium
schools in Scotland, which received more government support. The school finally
received government funding and recognition in 1996 (O'Reilly 1999, 128-133). In the
meantime, in 1994, an Irish-medium secondary school was founded in
Derry/Londonderry, receiving funding in 2000 only after becoming a stream within St.
Brigid’s College, an English-medium school (Department of Education Northern Ireland
2008, 15). As of 2012-2013, one Irish-medium school and three Irish-medium units
educated 796 secondary students in Northern Ireland (Department of Education n.d.).
Table 1 about here
20
Although the number of students studying through Irish remains low, it is clear that
percentages have increased every year but one and have more than tripled from 1996
onwards (see Table 1). Additionally, Irish-medium education as a whole, as in the
Republic of Ireland during this period, seems to be concentrated more in urban areas and
less in rural ones, with 10 of the primary schools in the Belfast area alone (Comhairle na
Gaelscolaíochta n.d.-a).
Another notable point is that, while the families who founded Shaw’s Road were
‘mainly working class people with minimal financial resources’ (Maguire 1991, 71), the
socioeconomic profiles of families whose children later attended the Shaw’s Road
Bunscoil varied widely. Families at either end of the socioeconomic spectrum—the
professionally qualified and unskilled manual workers—were overrepresented
significantly in the Shaw’s Road Bunscoil compared with Belfast overall when Maguire
(1991, 92-93) conducted her study in 1985. She interprets this as a signal that
socioeconomic factors cannot explain the cohesion of the community involved in the
Bunscoil and thus the explanation must lie ‘within the deeper realms of culture and
identity’. Furthermore, as the numbers of students at the school increased, parent
motivations seem to have changed and became more varied. This is evident in reasons
given by parents in 1985 for sending their children to the Shaw’s Road Bunscoil: The top
reason was ‘quality of education’ with 73.5 percent, followed closely by ‘Irish identity’
with 71 percent. ‘Language survival’, meanwhile, was only mentioned by 26 percent of
parents (Maguire 1991, 99). Students at the Bunscoil also increasingly came from
English-speaking homes, a development which led to an increase in the school’s status in
the community (Maguire 1991, 81).
21
Also worth noting during this period is the 1972 change in government from the
devolved government at Stormont dominated by the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party,
which had ruled since 1921, to direct rule by Westminster (Mac Póilin and Ni Bhaoille
2004, 3-4). This was the result of worsening relations between Protestants and Catholics
(Carmichael and Osborne 2003). Although this government was likely less hostile to the
Irish language than the previous one, Carmichael and Osborne (2003, 207-209) note that
although responsibility for Northern Irish legislation fell to Westminster at this time,
most Direct Rule Ministers—not Northern Irish themselves—took a hands-off approach.
This, they say, gave the civil service much leeway and allowed local notables to influence
policy despite their lack of electoral mandate.
The political climate did change significantly with the signing of the Good Friday
Agreement in 1998 (Mac Póilin and Ni Bhaoille 2004, 3-4). The Agreement states that
‘[a]ll participants recognise the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance in
relation to linguistic diversity, including in Northern Ireland, the Irish language, UlsterScots and the languages of the various ethnic communities, all of which are part of the
cultural wealth of the island of Ireland’ (the Good Friday Agreement in Mac Póilin and
Ni Bhaoille 2004, 4). Furthermore, the British government pledged to take ‘resolute
action’ to promote Irish, including in education. Yet, helpful as the agreement
undoubtedly has been in creating a political environment favorable to IME, the growth in
IME in Northern Ireland clearly predated the agreement. As such it cannot explain the
rise in IME in the 1980s and 1990s.
V. Discussion and Conclusion
22
Early trends in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland differ markedly. The
Republic of Ireland experienced a rapid rise in IME after 1920, followed by a more or
less steady decline from the 1940s to 1970s, with IME taking place more heavily in rural,
Irish-speaking areas than in urban or more English-speaking ones. Conversely, IME was
absent from Northern Ireland during this period, probably at least partly due to
demographic differences and accompanying policy differences.
After 1970, however, convergence can be observed. In both cases, growth is seen
in Irish-medium education, concentrated more heavily in urban areas. Furthermore, in
both cases, parents took the initiative for new schools after 1970, at least at first
(sometimes even in the Republic of Ireland) in defiance of the state. In addition, aside
from the initial group of Shaw’s Road Bunscoil parents, similar groups of parents—urban
and from higher socioeconomic groups than the general population—seem to have
enrolled their children in Irish-medium education, although a more comprehensive study
of such schools could provide firmer evidence. These parents seem to have had similar
motivations, both linguistic-cultural and educational, and in both cases, the proportion of
students from English-speaking homes seems to have increased over time. Taken
together, this suggests that the initiative for Irish-medium education has shifted from the
state to individual parents.
Confronting the empirical material with the theories and global trends outlined
before supports this view. Hechter’s cultural division of labour, one collectivist theory,
seems to explain the trend in the Republic of Ireland from 1920 to 1970. During the
earlier part of this period, leaders who had experienced the cultural division of labour
under British colonialism were making policies designed to increase participation in IME,
23
which had the desired effect. Later in this period, however, participation declined,
perhaps as those with memories of the cultural division of labour left power.
Furthermore, in Northern Ireland, where policymakers during this period were largely not
members of the disadvantaged group, no IME took place, although the initial group of
Shaw’s Road parents could have been motivated by their position in the cultural division
of labour. However, the cultural division of labour cannot explain the subsequent rise in
Irish-medium education in the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland, especially
considering parents’ stated motivations and socioeconomic status.
The trend in IME in the Republic of Ireland also fits neatly with the global trend
of nationalism (and its fall) during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. As
expected, government support for IME was high during the early decades of independent
Ireland, when nationalist leaders were in power, and decreased in the decades following
World War II. The global trend of nationalism cannot explain the surge in IME from the
1970s, however.
The individualist theories seem better able to account for this recent increase in
both polities. Bourdieu’s linguistic market suggested that people would use language, in
this case Irish/IME, in ways that would maintain their elite status or help them to imitate
the elite. The higher-than-average socioeconomic status of parents who engaged their
children in IME during this period in surveyed schools in the Republic of Ireland in
particular, as well as the emphasis they have placed on educational advantages in addition
to cultural/linguistic ones, supports this as the mechanism for increases in IME from the
1970s.
24
Smolicz’s idea of the personal cultural system can also explain this phenomenon.
This theory predicted that some people would prioritise the Irish language as the foremost
core cultural value in their personal cultural system if they saw some advantage for
themselves in doing so, or if other core cultural values, such as religion (i.e. Catholicism),
became less advantageous or desirable. Although it is difficult to evaluate this theory
completely without delving more deeply into Irish and Northern Irish social changes,
such changes—including declining church attendance (Hayes and Dowds 2010),
globalisation, and changes in indicators such as the employment rate of Catholics in
Northern Ireland (e.g., Blackaby, Murphy, and O'Leary 2008)—make it seem that parents
in recent decades would be more likely to prioritise language and choose IME for their
children. The fact that parents who took the initiative to found IME schools in Northern
Ireland came from a variety of backgrounds and stated many different motivations for
enrolling their children in IME schools supports Smolicz’ idea that the advantages that
people see in making a certain cultural choice are not restricted to socio-economic ones.
Although Bourdieu and Smolicz are no neoliberals themselves, the results of this
analysis also fit neatly with the global trends of glocalisation and neoliberalism that took
hold especially from the 1980s, which is when IME numbers really began their positive
trend in both polities. The pamphlets produced by Gaelscoileanna Teo promoting IME in
several different languages also speak to this trend. The perspectives by Bourdieu,
Smolicz and the glocalisation theorists can thus be seen as complementary, with each
highlighting different aspects of the consequences of enhanced individual agency for
MLME. Another point worth noting in this respect is that the trends in IME in both
polities are perfect illustrations of a global development towards more grassroots
25
involvement in MLME (as alluded to in the introduction). In this sense, there is nothing
unusual about these trends.
Our analyses thus suggest that theories focusing on the individual are more valid
for explaining trends from the 1970s, while those focusing on the collective have more
explanatory power regarding trends from the 1920s to the 1970s. This also strongly
supports the idea that at the same time, the initiative behind IME has shifted from the
state to individual parents. In a sense this change need not surprise us as it is consistent
with wider changes in society, including the diminishing salience of vertical lines of
authority and of collective institutions such as the family, the church, political parties and
unions. Today’s society is characterised by fluidity, compressed hierarchical structures,
individual agency and shallow group loyalties. This fluidity does raise the question,
however, of how lasting the new positive trend in IME is. Is IME just a fad that is easily
exchanged for a new marker of distinction by aspiring social groups in their frantic search
for educational strategies giving them and their offspring a competitive edge over other
people?
26
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Table 1: Percentage of Northern Irish students
in Irish-medium education, 1996-2008
Primary
Secondary
1996-97
0.47
0.12
1997-98
0.56
0.15
1998-99
0.63
0.17
1999-2000
0.68
0.20
2000-01
0.82
0.25
2001-02
0.98
0.25
2002-03
1.11
0.27
2003-04
1.31
0.31
2004-05
1.38
0.34
2005-06
1.47
0.38
2006-07
1.63
0.41
2007-08
1.67
0.43
Source: Department of Education (2008)
Department of Education (2008). Review of Irish-medium education report.
31
Figure 1. Development of Irish-medium education in the Republic of Ireland
32