CAREERS advice for students in Gaelic medium education (GME) must improve as too much pressure is being placed on teachers, an expert has said.
Dr Emma Bolger, who is based at the Open University and has children in GME, has led a research project into whether those attending Gaelic units and schools are able to capitalise on improved job prospects they should enjoy from learning the language.
Independently funded by the Carnegie Trust, the study also surveyed young adults aged 17–25 who had been through GME to explore its relevance to their career outcomes.
Bolger said while the project found positive long-term impacts of GME, she has called for a series of improvements to be made in students’ access to careers advice.
She told The National: “There is an assumption there is a benefit to having GME but there is just a lack of visibility of what those jobs are in the labour market where Gaelic is of benefit.”
Bolger said Gaelic teachers were coming under too much pressure to provide careers advice to students without having sufficient resources available to them to know about all the avenues pupils could be taking.
Bolger said it had been found that there are many roles where Gaelic comes in useful – such as in residential care – but it is often not explicitly laid out that fluency in the language would be desirable by employers.
She said: “There are many jobs where Gaelic is beneficial across Scotland – you’ve got hospitality and tourism or historical research and the academic side – but what we’ve found as well is there are so many roles where Gaelic just comes in really handy.
“Things like health and social care for example. We had young people talking about family members they had who were working in residential care with older adults who were at the later stages of their life and they were much more comfortable speaking in Gaelic which would have been their native tongue when they were younger.
“Having Gaelic speakers within that body of the workforce was really beneficial to individuals within residential care, to patients within hospitals, just being able to have a conversation about their care needs and know they were precisely conveying what the meant.”
While pupils in English medium education often go to their parents as the first port of call for careers advice, research found Gaelic school students are instead going to their teacher.
Bolger said she would like to see teachers be given more resources to provide enhanced careers advice and more visibility around the Gaelic jobs board, Obraichean Gàidhlig.
She has also called for public sector organisations to be more proactive in highlighting jobs to Gaelic speakers.
She said: “The Gaelic teachers are being expected to know about all possible routes that are out there, so actually equipping the teachers with clear and useful resources for career planning within the curriculum would be really useful.
“Also, we don’t know where the jobs are – there’s one Gaelic jobs board which when we asked young people not everyone knew that existed. So having a bit more focus on that would be good.
“Employers are keen to recruit people who have Gaelic language skills, but they don’t always tend to put that on a job spec because it’s not an essential.”
She added: “All public sector organisations will have Gaelic language plans and often in them there will be a mention of how to recruit more Gaelic speakers, but again what is the practical way you’re doing that? Do all your vacancies say we welcome applications from Gaelic speakers?
“Just an acknowledgement that Gaelic fluency and any additional language is valued would be good to see.”
