St
Colman’s College in Newry has become the first school in County Down to
be awarded the prestigious Gaelbhratach flag in recognition of their
involvement in Irish language outreach work in local primary schools.
Through
a scheme run by Gael Linn, an organisation which focuses on promotion
of the language, a group of sixth form students ran a series of
activities and events with the aim of passing on their love for the
language to their peers.
Sean
Devlin, who is studying Irish at A-level in the school said he enjoyed
“getting younger students involved in the language this year and
promoting it”.
“We
went out to two primary schools in the local area to teach Irish to the
children there. It was a good experience and we had good craic teaching
the children basic phrases. They had never had the chance to learn any
Irish before that so we were starting from the beginning.”
Oran Goss also took part in the scheme and was involved in setting up Irish language classes for staff in the school.
“We
taught a class of about 15 members of staff, a mix of teachers,
classroom assistants and canteen staff and it was a really good
experience, they were really keen to learn the language.”
The
students also ran football training in Irish for fellow students,
invited the local girls’ school to take part in a Valentine’s event in
Irish and organised an Irish-based bingo loco event for students in year
nine.
The
students were presented with the Gaelbhratach flag at an awards
ceremony in Limerick two weeks ago, St Colman’s being the only school
from Ulster at the event.
Around
400 schools across Ireland take part in the scheme each year and St
Colman’s is the first from County Down to have been awarded the flag.
Off
the back of the success, two students were invited to give evidence to
the Irish Language and Gaeltacht Oireachtas committee in the Dáil, which
they did speaking entirely in Irish.
The committee focuses on informing and shaping future policy on the learning of Irish within schools.
Speaking about his experience there, Fionn McCall said he put forward points about the importance of spoken Irish.
“In
the Republic of Ireland, they don’t have any speaking as part of their
exam process and I wanted to stress how important speaking is for
learning the language.”
Sean
Devlin used his platform in the Dáil to speak about his great enjoyment
of the language and acknowledged the importance of his many trips to
the Donegal Gaeltacht over the summer where he was able to practice
speaking it.
Ciara Hardy who teaches the boys Irish at the school says she is “so proud of what they’ve achieved this year”.
“They’ve gone above and beyond to run all the different activities and
you can see first hand the impact of that with different staff members
and students greeting each other in Irish in the corridors.”