Scottish Gaelic-medium education
Not included in this figure are university students at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Lews Castle College, or Ionad Chaluim Chille Ìle who are taking their degrees through the medium of Gaelic.
[3][4][5] In 2021, 11,874 pupils in Scotland were receiving some kind of education in Gaelic representing 1.7% of the country's student population.
The country's only other dedicated Gaelic-medium secondary school is Sgoil Lionacleit on the island of Benbecula in Na h-Eileanan Siar which enrolled 277 students in 2020/21.
"[18]In her 2013 thesis, Julia Landgraf found that the few GME students exhibiting fully bilingual abilities came from Gaelic-speaking households.
[19] And it is now apparent that GME students from cities and from Gaelic-speaking areas are increasingly exhibiting English-influenced phonology.
[21] The attitudes towards education and the promotion of Anglicisation have been described as resulting from "confrontation of two disparate societies...Lowland Scotland made plain its anxiety concerning the unreformed society in the north in terms of unease concerning its language, which was identified as the chief cause of barbarity, ignorance and popery"[22] and can be seen as a continuation of such policies going back to 1609 and the Statutes of Iona which saw the Gaelic-speaking nobility of Scotland forced to send their children to be educated in English-speaking Lowland Scotland; an act which has been described as "the first of a succession of measures taken by the Scottish government specifically aimed at the extirpation of the Gaelic language, the destruction of its traditional culture and the suppression of its bearers.
"[23] This was followed in 1616 by an act of the privy council which included a requirement that the children of the Highland nobility must be capable of speaking, reading and writing English if they were to be recognised as heirs.
Ironically, one of the primary aims of the society was the de-Gaelicisation of the Highlands, and initially its schools taught exclusively through the medium of the English language with the equivalent use of Gaelic prohibited.
However, following the early period of success the groups encountered financial difficulties due to poor administration and started to decline around 1830 and by 1850 only the original Edinburgh society remained although this branch, with strong support from the Edinburgh Ladies Association, continued until 1892.
[30] The effect of the education act upon the Gaelic language has been described as "disastrous"[31] and the continuation of a general policy (by both Scottish, and post 1707, British) which aimed at Anglicisation.
[31] Pressure upon the Scottish Education Department in the years immediately following the act of 1872 saw the gradual reintroduction of certain measures providing for the use of Gaelic in schools.
[33] The severe financial difficulties suffered by Highland schools at this time saw the introduction of the "Highland Minute" in 1887 which aimed at aiding designated boards financially while also recognising Gaelic as a specific subject in the higher classes of both elementary and secondary schools.
