SHOULD DRUMMOND GO GAELIC?

Last month we reported the idea being floated in a Council Report that Drummond Community High School could become a dedicated Gaelic Medium Education School (Breaking news, 8.12.17; Report, 3.15–3.19).

Some parents of children at Drummond and its feeder schools are alarmed at this suggestion and are now mobilising to resist it. (Nobody yet knows their exact number, but our understanding is that they're a considerable portion of the total parent body.)

In this article we report their concerns, describe how the debate has unfolded so far, and provide extensive impartial context for discussions which have major implications for education at local and citywide levels.

In a nutshell

Gaelic Medium Education (GME) is currently provided at primary level at Bun-sgoil Taobh na Pàirce (TnP) on Bonnington Road. At secondary level, GME is provided at James Gillespie’s High School in Bruntsfield. Gillespie’s, the Report states, ‘will experience issues accommodating the expected pupil intake in future years’.

It therefore suggests Drummond as the site for secondary GME education in the future, adding that ‘The transfer of GME secondary provision to DCHS [Drummond Community High School] could also provide an opportunity in the longer term, if demand continues to increase, for the school to operate as a dedicated GME secondary school’.

In fact, the idea of using Drummond for GME was first mooted by a Short Term Working Group in May 2016, but neither staff at Drummond nor the Parent Council were told about it at the time (see Appendix 1).

Initial reactions

It seems that a significant proportion of parents whose children are educated in English rather than Gaelic see this potential development at Drummond not as an ‘opportunity’ but as a threat to the continued existence of the local school open to all students in the local community. 

Soon after the Report was released, parents from some of Drummond’s feeder primary schools (Broughton PS, Leith Walk PS and Abbeyhill PS) contacted Drummond staff and Drummond Parent Council (DPC) expressing particular concern. The deadline for school placing requests was 24 December, meaning parents and children were having to make the difficult decision about which school to choose when it was not clear whether pupils opting for Drummond would be able to complete their education there. It was also unclear whether younger siblings would be able to join them later.

DPC wrote to councillors on the Education, Children and Families committee as follows:

So that parents of P7 children and younger siblings have confidence in choosing Drummond, it would be extremely helpful to have on the record that any 2018 to 2023 admissions to Drummond will be able to stay for their entire school career in Drummond. Would it be possible for Education, Children & Families Committee to give this assurance tomorrow? 

On 12 December, DPC received the following reply from City of Edinburgh council officers:

It would be our intention to confirm in any statutory consultation paper which comes forward that any pupil who begins their secondary education at Drummond High School will be able to complete it at the school. 

This does not give the firm assurance parents sought about sibling guarantees.

In view of the impending placing deadline (then 2 weeks away), DPC organised a meeting on 19 December at which over 20 parents from Broughton PS, Leith Walk PS and Drummond CHS were present. Many had  children in P6 or P7, and were upset about the unhelpful timing of the consultation. Some said this would be their sole reason for not choosing Drummond. It was also felt that having an informal consultation in January, with the idea of agreeing ‘a suitable transfer proposal’ in time to write a ‘detailed draft statutory consultation’ by March 2018 did not give much time for assessing the views of primary parents.

A City of Edinburgh Council official who attended the meeting emphasised that for now the Drummond proposal is only at the informal discussion stage – no operational decisions have been made, and it is anticipated that any transition would be gradual and undertaken only after full discussion with parents from both Drummond and the GME community. Entry to Drummond of GME pupils would be on a year by year basis initially and not a complete transfer of S1–6.

Parental concerns

Parents at the meeting were not reassured by these statements. They were clearly against Drummond becoming a dedicated GME school, where Gaelic fluency and/or GME primary education would be an entry requirement. They supported GME in general. However, there was an overwhelming concern that if GME were to come to Drummond alongside mainstream education, it is very likely that this would lead ultimately to Drummond becoming a dedicated GME school in future. 

Such misgivings stem from:

• analysing school CEC school roll projections (see below)
• GME education’s increasing popularity (Appendix 2)
• the understandable determination of parents of children in GME to have a better standard of GME at secondary level, in particular a dedicated GME secondary school with sufficient capacity guaranteed for the long term (Appendix 3)
• the strong political support for GME, evident in the draft Gaelic Language Plan 2018–2022 (Appendix 4).

School roll projections

Adding the Council’s latest projections of the Drummond school roll to the projections of pupils in secondary GME (from the CEC’s draft Gaelic Language Plan) suggests that Drummond’s current capacity of 600 would be exceeded in the year 2022 (figures in red).

[Projections assuming a phased move of Gaelic to Drummond, i.e. from 2019 onwards P7s from TnP transition to Drummond rather than Gillespie's. Gaelic projections from 2025 onwards are based on estimating the Gaelic intake to be 60. If the current P1 intake of 77 is sustained, there would be 462 GME pupils – making 961 pupils in total.]

The projections are currently the best estimate about what could happen, but they assume past patterns of placing decisions. Decisions about school placing may well change – for example, non-GME pupils may be put off attending Drummond, or GME pupils living within the Gillespie's catchment may prefer their local school.

There is also underlying uncertainty in the baseline predictions. Apart from random effects, these predictions are based partly on historic patterns of what fraction of catchment primary P7s stay in-catchment. Ever since the proposal to close Drummond as part of the wave of school closures in 2007 (successfully opposed by Drummond parents and pupils – see Issues 151, 152), many parents and children at Drummond’s feeder primaries have requested to be placed out of catchment (though that situation seems to be changing, with Drummond increasingly the school of choice for locals). Thus, were the GME proposal not on the table, it is probable that the predictions for Drummond would rise considerably.

Accommodating Gaelic and English together

Nevertheless, the figures beg questions about what changes the Council would make in the early 2020s if GME were at Drummond alongside English-Medium Education (non-GME).

• Would out-of-catchment requests to Drummond still be allowed? Would the catchment feeder schools be changed?
• If so, would siblings of children already at Drummond be guaranteed a place?
• Would it be possible to expand the accommodation at Drummond?
• Could Drummond manage GME and children from local non-GME primaries for 20 years?

The draft Gaelic Language Plan 2018–2022, which was open to consultation until 15 December, has commitments to GME, including increasing primary and secondary capacity (Appendix 4). In particular, it requires any school site chosen for secondary GME to ‘develop a long-term plan to ensure the quality and sustainable (with capacity for at least 20 years) expansion of GME, and may form a through school for 3-18’.

The basic modelling of school-roll predictions indicates that, with first entry of P7 pupils from TnP happening in 2019, capacity issues would have to be addressed by 2022. This is without extra GME primary school-level capacity, as aspired to in the draft Gaelic Language Plan. If the current P1 roll of 77 at TnP is maintained and all transferred to secondary GME, this would give a secondary roll of 462, which would fit comfortably in Drummond – but only if there were no non-GME pupils there. The remaining capacity could be used for an extra primary stream, thus forming a ‘through school for 3-18’. There is precedent for combining primary and secondary in the Glasgow Gaelic School.

GME without Gaelic?

It is also possible that the demand for GME will reduce or that the capacity for it will be limited by difficulties in recruiting staff. According to the draft Gaelic Language Plan, there were only 3 teaching staff engaging in GME at Gillespie’s in March 2017, with PE, Modern Studies, Geography and RME being taught in Gaelic, as well as Gaelic language. One consultation response in the Gaelic Language Plan states:

Real concern expressed at the level of uncertainty at secondary level and the future for GME kids, and that fluency is being lost.

These concerns were expressed in the Comann nam Pàrabt Dùn Èideann and Bun-sgoil Taobh na Pàirce Parent Council joint response to the Council's draft Gaelic Language Plan 2018–2022 (see Appendix 5 for summary).

If GME were to be moved to Drummond, it seems possible that there could be GME without very much Gaelic, which would be galling for parents of children at existing feeder primaries if their children were excluded. Although the draft Gaelic Language Plan consultation responses state that ‘People seemed happy to follow a Glasgow model of having subjects taught in English until more Gaelic teachers were available in a Gaelic high school’, the response of the Gaelic parents states that:

We consider that it is vital that future planning for a transition to new secondary arrangements on a new site are underpinned by proper embedding of a GME unit at [Gillespie’s] which includes increased staff numbers, a broad curriculum of subjects delivered through Gaelic and a staff member or members with specific responsibility for delivery of the GME curriculum. Failure to create a coherent and ambitious GME arrangement at [Gillespie’s] before any move takes place creates a risk that both transition and new secondary arrangements may themselves fail.

Parents of pupils at Drummond and its feeder primaries who met in December are not against secondary GME, but they don’t want it to be at the expense of their local school. They are concerned that, in the context of the aspiration of the Gaelic parent bodies for a dedicated GME secondary school, a period of coexistence with GME and non-GME would be difficult to manage, and could lead to tension between the two groups of parents and pupils. The parents were also concerned that non-GME children might not have the same subject options as GME ones. 

What next?

Later this month, there will be an informal consultation process involving parent councils at Drummond, Gillespie’s and Bun-sgoil Taobh na Pàirce with engagement events for the wider school communities and other stakeholders, including those with an interest in GME. If a suitable transfer proposal can be agreed with all the affected parties then a detailed draft statutory consultation paper would be submitted to Committee in March 2018 for consideration.

Reaching any agreement on a transfer proposal will be challenging. It is very hard to see how Drummond could fulfil both the long-term aspirations of the GME community for a site providing dedicated secondary GME, and the desire of local parents to retain their local, valued school, open to non-GME pupils.

The initial proposal is for secondary GME to move to Drummond alongside non-GME. However, the momentum behind GME leads some Drummond and feeder-primary parents (we don't know their exact number but we gather they're a significant proportion) to believe that transition to a dedicated GME school is very likely in the medium to long term.

There is a sense among these parents that Drummond is being used as an experiment about whether dedicated GME can be made to work at secondary level in Edinburgh, which appears to have more severe problems with Gaelic teacher supply than does Glasgow.

There are currently no stated plans about what happens to pupils from current Drummond catchment primaries if demand for GME grows. Under the current proposal, it will be difficult for the Council to offer the certainty that both GME and non-GME parents want to hear.

Drummond Parent Council is considerably disturbed by the whole proposal, and we understand it's currently drafting a 'Statement of concern' which is likely to be issued later this week.

For now, Spurtle is remaining neutral while we continue to gather more information and expert insights. In the meantime, we're very keen to hear opinions from all sides with an interest in the debate.

Tell us what you think at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk or @theSpurtle or Facebook

UPDATE: For more on this subject, see 'Could Powderhall go Gaelic?' at Breaking news, 16.1.18 and 'Greens on Gaelic' at Breaking news, 18.1.18; and 'Conservatives on Gaelic' at Breaking news, 30.1.18.

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