Below is my personal response to the consultation on the Scottish Languages Bill. If you haven’t submitted your own response yet, there is still time! The consultation closes on Friday, and you can find the forms here in English and in Gaelic.

Distinguished members of the Education, Children and Young People Committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the current draft of the Scottish Languages Bill. While there is much to recommend in the current draft, I would like to focus on one critical weakness I see in the bill as it stands, and that is that the draft legislation establishes no new language rights for Gaelic or Scots speakers, and specifically, no parental right to Gaelic medium education (GME).

Gaelic is in an enigmatic position in Scotland at this point in its history. In some respects, the language has never been more popular. When asked in Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, 90% of young adults said that Gaelic is an important part of Scotland’s cultural heritage and 59% of young adults said that they would like to speak better Gaelic. With this kind of support, Gaelic should be in rude health, but it is also true that public provision of Gaelic adult and childhood education lags far behind this demand, with less than 2% of Scots reporting any ability in the language in the last census and only 1% of Scottish primary students enrolled in GME.

The provision gap in GME is particularly damaging. While research shows that GME is very attractive to parents throughout Scotland, with 28% of adults reporting that they would consider GME for their children if offered in their area,^† GME is still only available in 3.1% of Scottish primary schools. Given this demand, and after 40 years of pressure from parents and other activists, provision should be much more widespread than it is now, but the growth of GME has been consistently blocked by councils around the country and hindered by a lack of a clear parental right to GME for their children.

A right to GME was a central demand of the campaign for secure status for Gaelic in the 1990s, a campaign that culminated in the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, but when the final act was passed, to the great disappointment of Gaelic activists and parents, no such right was included. Indeed, the act was so weak that it did not contain any substantive language rights at all. As a result, parents and other Gaelic activists have been left to fight long and exhausting political campaigns to force councils to open Gaelic units and schools again and again for decades. The Education (Scotland) Act 2016 only further enshrined this broken process in law.

A parental right to GME is practical and achievable in a country as wealthy as the Scotland. Of course, such a right would require rapidly growing the supply of Gaelic-medium teachers, but with sufficient political will, this is entirely possible. For example, in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) in Spain, a region with a similar per capita GDP to Scotland, through a generous program of language-learning bursaries and sabbaticals, authorities increased the supply of teachers qualified in the Basque language from around 5% to almost 90% in less than 30 years.

As the statistics above show, Gaelic’s support in Scotland is far broader than its small number of speakers might suggest. With the proper educational provision, Gaelic has the potential to grow to be a widely-spoken language again in Scotland, but that provision will only materialize if Gaelic speakers are afforded substantive language rights in legislation. Our experience with the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 has taught us an important lesson: serious language legislation has to confer language rights.

I sincerely hope that this can be achieved. I remain optimistic that political support for language rights can be found in the current parliament, and above all, that this legislation can be strengthened to include a clear right for parents to choose Gaelic education for their children.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Is mise le meas,

Dr Timothy Curry Armstrong

Senior Lecturer in Gaelic and Communication, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

Bòrd na Gàidhlig. 2023. Gaelic Education Data 2022-23. Inverness.

Mac an Tàilleir, Iain. 2014. Cunntas-sluaigh na h-Alba 2011; Clàran mun Ghàidhlig [The 2011 Scottish Census; Responses about Gaelic]. Unpublished report.

O’Hanlon, Fiona and Lindsay Paterson. 2017. “Factors influencing the likelihood of choice of Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland: results from a national public survey.” Language, Culture and Curriculum 30 (1): 48‒75.

ScotCen Social Research. 2022. Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2021: Public attitudes to Gaelic in Scotland – Main report. http://www.gaidhlig.scot/en/news/SSAS/

Zalbide, Mikel and Jasone Cenoz. 2008. “Bilingual Education in the Basque Autonomous Community: Achievements and Challenges.” Language, Culture and Curriculum 21(1): 5‒20.

† Edited, 2/3/24. I got this stat wrong in my actual submission. It should be 28% rather than 27% as I had it in the documant I sent into the consultation.