Madam, – On July 16th The Irish Timesreported on an ESRI study on immigrant students which found that more than half of all school principals reported language difficulties among a significant proportion of their immigrants students.
On the same day, Dr Colm McCarthy, author of the “Bord Snip” report, justifies proposed further cuts of 1,000 English language support teachers with the words: “Those who teach English to newcomer children for example are not needed as much as they were before.” The irony is not lost. However, whereas the ESRI study is based on solid research, Dr McCarthy justifies his proposed cuts in the report with “estimated immigration and labour market parameters” which are not referenced.
Indeed, there are no such “estimates” which would in any way justify such a drastic cut in English language support for immigrant children. According to the most recent figures from the quarterly national household survey, 462,000 non-Irish nationals live in the country. In its latest quarterly economic commentary, the ESRI predicts net outward migration of 40,000 for the year 2010.
Even assuming that all of these emigrants would be from the recent immigrant population (which is unlikely as these emigrants probably will include some Irish nationals as well), this would not fundamentally alter the composition of Irish society. For the foreseeable future, immigrants will remain a significant part of Ireland’s population, irrespective of the current economic downturn.
In such circumstances the recommendations of the “Bord Snip” report, based on spurious immigration “estimates”, beggar belief. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that stresses the importance of language as a key ingredient for successful immigrant integration.
A 2006 OECD study (Where Immigrant Students Succeed) concluded that those countries that only have a small performance gap between immigrant and native students are those that “tend to have well-established language support programmes with relatively clearly defined goals and standards.”
If Ireland wants to avoid repeating the mistakes of the “old” European immigration countries, the Government is well advised to ignore the recommendations for further cuts in English language support teachers. – Yours, etc,