Irish Medium Schools – Partnership in Practice

Abstract

Since 1999 local Education and Library Boards in Northern Ireland have received funding to employ speech and language therapists to work with mainstream year-one classes. These projects provide training for teachers and classroom assistants which combines in-service training and in-class support, using shadowing and co-teaching methods. Significant gains for teachers and children have been evidenced. In 2003, the projects were extended into the Irish-medium education sector. Advisory speech and language therapists have worked in close collaboration with school staff and the advisory teacher for literacy in Irish-medium schools. Resources to promote phonological awareness skills in Irish were designed, piloted and published. The current study evaluates the effectiveness of this model of collaboration and the success of its extension into the Irish-medium sector. The children’s outcomes on vocabulary, narrative and phonological awareness assessments are compared to those of their peers in English medium schools. The value of such partnerships is discussed and recommendations for advances in the Irish-medium sector are made.