PPLI Audit of Foreign Languages - Flipbook - Page 4
Key Findings
• French is taught in 94% of schools throughout the country at both junior and senior cycle and there is therefore
little to discuss in terms of its provision, it is provided in every type of school at every level in every county and
it is the only language on offer on the curriculum in 26% of English-medium schools and 25% of Irish-medium
schools.
• The larger the school, the wider the choice of languages. For example, in Junior Cycle 31% of small schools offer
German, whereas 66% of medium sized schools offer it and 78% of large sized schools. The provision of Spanish
and Italian increases in large sized schools with Spanish only offered in 28% of small sized schools and 27% of
medium sized schools, but in 56% of large sized schools, and Italian offered in only 2% of both small and medium
sized schools but in 5% of large sized schools.
• The type of school affects the range of languages provided with fee-paying voluntary secondary schools offering
the widest range of languages at both junior and senior cycle. This is particularly clear in the case of Spanish
which is offered in 76% of fee-paying voluntary secondary schools at Junior Cycle but in only 35% of ETB schools,
32% of non-fee-paying voluntary secondary schools, and 27% of Community and Comprehensive schools.
Similarly, provision of Chinese in TY is as high as 50% in fee-paying voluntary secondary schools and as low as
14% in ETB schools. The trend is reversed in the case of Japanese which is as likely to be offered in Community
and Comprehensive schools (10%) and ETB schools (7%) as in non-fee-paying voluntary secondary schools (7%)
and is less likely to be offered in fee-paying voluntary secondary schools. This must reflect the fact that it is
primarily provided by the PPLI in the form of ex-quota hours.
• Geography also influences the languages available on the curriculum e.g. Italian and Japanese for the Leaving
Certificate are concentrated in Dublin schools. Whereas German is provided in every county, there is low level
provision or no provision of Spanish in many counties (see figure 24). The majority of schools that responded
to the survey from the North West were small or medium sized schools, so the audit showed a particularly
reduced choice of languages in that area.
• Where only one foreign language is provided in the curriculum the main reasons given for this are allocation, lack
of student numbers, tradition, lack of staff qualifications and timetable constraints. Staff qualifications are a
more significant constraint in Irish-medium schools than in English-medium schools, where insufficient numbers
are more likely to be cited.
• Overall 37% of schools allow more than one foreign language to be taken at Leaving Certificate, and in these
schools the average number of students doing so is only 11. The girls’ schools average 19 girls and the boys’
schools average 15 boys studying more than one language, while in mixed schools it is only 8 students.
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Audit of Foreign Languages Provision in Post-Primary Schools 2017
Post-Primary Languages Initiative February 2017 Draft Report