Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

The 2008 report was extremely complimentary of the modern languages initiative. While it referred to possible overload, its recommendation was that the initiative should continue. The Minister rightly points out that the programme was never rolled out to all schools. In commentary attributed to him and to the Department there was a suggestion that a cap had been placed on an extension of the initiative. That is not correct. The cap was lifted in 2007, with an additional 200 schools joining the initiative in the meantime. There has been ill informed commentary in regard to the extension of the programme and its value and a selective excising of one comment from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment report. That report is outdated in any case given that the NCCA is currently working on a new report on language teaching in schools.

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