Pupils 'having fun' switching from one language to another

Irish is the latest language nine-year-old Soham can now confidently speak.

The St Malachy's Primary School pupil also speaks Marathi, Hindi and English.

The Belfast school is one of over 80 in Northern Ireland taking part in the Scoil Spreagtha scheme.

Organised by the language organisation Gael Linn, it encourages English-medium schools to use Irish too.

Soham told BBC News NI that Irish is used widely in his school.

"In assembly, we talk to each other a bit in Irish," he said.

"It's fun just switching from one language to another.

"During the day in school we mostly use English and Irish, but in my house I use English, a bit of Irish sometimes and Hindi and Marathi."

According to Soham's teacher at St Malachy's, Colette McSherry, learning a second language when young brings many other benefits for pupils.

"It helps their listening skills, because they have to listen very closely to pick up the pronunciation," she said.

"We find their concentration, their motivation, everything improves.

"We've been doing some Irish for a while.

"It's not an add-on, it's something that comes naturally throughout the day."

About 40% of St Malachy's 400 pupils are "newcomers", who did not originally have Irish or English as a first language.

"Those children, they are especially keen to learn Irish," Ms McSherry said.

"They go home and they teach their parents phrases in Irish, their parents will use some Irish when they're speaking to me in the morning.

"It's fantastic. There's a whole culture of where languages are really important and really precious."

St Malachy's pupils Freya and Jayson are both aged 10 and are also learning Irish.

"We learn Irish in school, like the colours and the numbers," Jayson said.

"We play games and we do some stuff in PE and we do all the counties in Ireland.

"It just seems fun."

Freya also said that she enjoyed learning about "the colours and the numbers" in Irish.

Séamas Mac Eochaidh, from Gael Linn, said that St Malachy's was one of 82 English-medium primary schools taking part in the initiative.

In total, nearly 15,000 pupils are involved in the Scoil Spreagtha scheme and more than 80 schools are on the waiting list for it, he said.

However Mr Mac Eochaidh said that there were concerns about the falling number of pupils studying languages, including Irish, for GCSE and beyond.

"We believe that a lot of that is that children don't get the educational opportunities to learn a second language or to hear a second language or to see second language on a daily basis at the primary level," he said.

"We believe that this work being done at primary level will boost GCSE numbers not just for Irish at GCSE but all languages."

Funding for a primary school languages programme was axed almost a decade ago.

Mr Mac Eochaidh said that bilingual learning increased pupils' enthusiasm for learning all languages.

"There's been numerous examples of us being on a school visits where children have translated from one language to the other, back to the other, back to another language," he said.

"We would say that the Irish language can be an initiator for that.

"Everybody feels like they're on the same equal playing field, which obviously promotes that multicultural and multilingual classroom environment."