PPLI Audit of Foreign Languages - Flipbook - Page 38
The last comment in particular is a cause for concern. There are approximately 58 million Italian speakers in Italy,
1.5 million in Romania, close to 1 million in France, over half a million in Switzerland and over half a million in
Croatia. Italy is the third largest economy in the Eurozone and according to CSO figures, between January and
October 2017 Ireland exported €2,130 million worth of goods to Italy, and imported €1,323 million worth of goods
from Italy. Italian and its benefits need to be further promoted to schools, parents and students.
Lithuanian
Arabic
Portuguese
Japanese
Polish
Russian
Other
French
German
Italian
Chinese
Spanish
Number not applicable
Smaller Schools
500
Non-fee-paying
Voluntary
Secondary
Schools
0%
1%
1%
1%
3%
4%
5%
6%
12%
12%
8%
16%
51%
1%
1%
2%
2%
2%
3%
5%
11%
12%
12%
18%
18%
46%
0%
1%
2%
2%
2%
3%
4%
9%
12%
13%
15%
21%
46%
Fee-Paying
Voluntary
Secondary
Schools
ETB Schools
Community and
Comp Schools
0%
0%
0%
0%
4%
15%
8%
4%
4%
23%
19%
8%
46%
1%
0%
1%
1%
2%
2%
7%
10%
13%
7%
11%
13%
55%
0%
0%
0%
2%
2%
2%
4%
9%
13%
11%
9%
16%
49%
Figure 33: Teachers who, with further upskilling, would be capable of additional foreign languages
Q31: Are there teachers in your school who, with further upskilling, would be capable of teaching any of the following
foreign languages?
Question 31 asks if there are teachers in the school who, with further upskilling, would be capable of teaching Arabic,
Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish.
In terms of upskilling existing teachers to teach additional languages, half of English-medium schools and 29% of
Irish-medium schools do not have teachers who would be able to teach additional languages with upskilling. Among
those which indicate that they do, Spanish, Chinese and Italian are the languages most mentioned. It is
understandable that Spanish and Italian would be mentioned as there are teachers in the system who would have
taken these languages as part of their degree programmes but Chinese is interesting. It would appear from the
relevant comments that principals are referring to teachers who have taken part-time courses in Chinese with the
Confucius Institutes e.g. the teacher has an interest in Chinese and has some basic modules done.
The Teaching Council have implemented Cosán: The National Framework for Teachers’ Learning which could assist
with teacher upskilling. In the spirit of Cosán, and as part of the implementation of the foreign languages strategy,
PPLI are providing language upskiling for teachers qualified in particular languages but not currently teaching them.
The possibility of post-graduate courses in additional foreign languages for existing language teachers qualified in
other languages is also being examined.
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Audit of Foreign Languages Provision in Post-Primary Schools 2017
Post-Primary Languages Initiative February 2017 Draft Report