Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I am responding on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn. I thank Deputies Griffin and Pringle for raising this issue. I welcome the opportunity to clarify the position on the decision that was taken in the context of budget 2012 concerning the ending of the modern languages in primary schools initiative.

As part of the budget 2012 decisions that have been announced, the modern languages in primary schools initiative will cease at the end of the 2011-12 school year. The savings from this measure will go towards the cost of implementing the new national literacy and numeracy strategy, which is a key commitment in the programme for Government. Since he was appointed as Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn has spoken repeatedly about the need to raise educational standards. The curriculum reform priorities in the period ahead are to strengthen achievement in literacy and numeracy, to implement reforms in maths, Irish and science, and to progress junior cycle reforms.

The modern languages initiative, which was a pilot scheme involving approximately 500 schools, had been operating since 1998. It has not been possible for other schools to join the pilot project for a number of years. The way it operated meant it was not capable of being rolled out to all 3,200 primary schools. The decision to end the scheme from June 2012 was partly based on policy advice from a 2008 report of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, which identified serious issues with curricular overload at primary level. The council recommended that modern languages should not be part of the primary school curriculum as an additional and separate subject at present.

The primary curriculum is being reviewed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment in the context of the national literacy and numeracy strategy. The focus of the review will be on how best to enhance children's learning in these areas, to provide a clearer delineation of the learning outcomes required and to integrate into the infant cycle the learning experiences from the curriculum framework for early childhood education, Aistear.

Targeted support is provided to post-primary schools to enable them to diversify their language provision. There is a particular focus on Spanish, Japanese, Russian and Italian. Other languages, including French, German and Arabic, are also taught at second level. Participation in foreign languages remains high by comparison with other subjects. The vast majority of students study two languages and thereby develop core skills which will serve them well in future language learning. There are many opportunities outside the second level system for people to resume language learning.

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