Schools with high rate of Irish exemptions to be audited

It comes as over 13,000 primary school students had an exemption from Irish for the last school year, nearly 3,000 more than had previously been reported by the department.

It emerged during the department’s quality assurance of figures for exemptions from Irish for the 2022/23 academic year that an incorrect figure had been issued in relation to exemptions at primary-level at the end of last year due to a database error.

The total number provided was 10,414, whereas the corrected figure is 13,060.

“This resulted from an error in extracting data from a single exemption category in POD [primary database] due to the implementation of a new business intelligence tool at short notice,” said a spokesperson for the department.

“The error was corrected as soon as we were aware of the discrepancy and the issue with the new business intelligence tool has now been resolved. The department apologises for any inconvenience this may cause.”

A number of other supports are also to be progressed, including curricular reform, upskilling of teachers and a national campaign to promote bilingualism.

“The Department of Education has written to all post-primary principals and will be writing to all primary principals shortly, reminding them of the criteria set out in the circulars for granting exemptions from the study of Irish,” the spokesperson said. “In addition, the department plans to audit schools with high levels of exemptions. Going forward, the department plans to publish data on exemptions at a national level in its annual statistical reports.”

A total of 3,861 new Irish exemptions were granted at primary school level last year, bringing the total number of exemptions to 13,060 – amounting to 2.38pc of the total number of primary students – while 19,882 new Irish exemptions were granted at a post-primary level during the last academic year.

A total of 49,570 exemptions for studying Irish were in place that year, accounting for 12.2pc of the total number of students enrolled in post-primary schools.

“Statistics for those exempt from the study of Irish for the 2022/23 school year must be seen in the broader context,” the spokesperson said.

“It is the first year of implementation of new circulars, so there will be a cohort of students at all levels who would not have previously met the criteria for an exemption from the study of Irish.”