Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I am taking this Adjournment matter on behalf of my colleague, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, Minister for Education and Skills.

I welcome the opportunity to outline to the House the decision taken by the Minister 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 becoming Minister for Education and Skills, the Minister has spoken repeatedly about the need to raise educational standards. In terms of curriculum reform, the 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 was a pilot scheme, involving approximately 500 schools, and had been operating since 1998. It has not been possible for other schools to join the pilot project for a number of years and the way in which it operated was not capable of being rolled out to all 3,200 primary schools. The decision to end the scheme from June 2012 was based in part on policy advice from a 2008 report by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, which has identified serious issues with curricular overload at primary level. The NCCA's advice 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, providing for a clear delineation of the learning outcomes required and integrating into the infant cycle the learning experiences from Aistear, the curriculum framework for early childhood education.

At post-primary level, targeted support is provided for schools to enable them to diversify language provision, with a particular focus on Spanish, Japanese, Russian and Italian. Other languages taught at second level include French, German and Arabic. Participation in foreign languages, relative to other subjects, remains high at post-primary level. The majority of students are studying two languages, thereby developing core skills that will serve them well in future language learning. There are many opportunities outside the second level system for people to resume language learning.

Ending the scheme was not easy, but before the decision was taken the Minister gave careful consideration to the concerns about the teaching of languages. I again thank the Senator for affording me the opportunity to respond to the House on the matter.