 Fawr mheifwllwch na fawr i ddigonol y dweud y gaeligol y cwygharau a hwnnw i ddechrau, gyda i yng Nghymru yn 2022. Fy g carel합니다 unigol y gweld cyllid yng Nghymru sydd yn y cyllid y cheyrno i raddunol yn fawr gymhaelol, ei ddweud, ac mae'n ddiddorol yng Nghymru i ddweud arnaeth maen chi'n gweithio a'r cyllid yn Fawr Mheifwllwch. Mcmillan, director of development and Jim Whannell, director of education for Bordna Gallag. Mary McInnes will be making an opening statement. Before I invite her to do so, I would like to make a few comments. The Scottish Parliament is committed to facilitating the use of the Gallag language in its proceedings wherever possible. We were keen that Bordna Gallag be able to give their opening statement in Gallag and sought to make arrangements to support this. However, we were unfortunately unable to secure an interpreter for this morning's meeting. So I am grateful for the Bordna Gallag for working with the Parliament staff to find an alternative option and grateful to Mary McInnes who will now deliver the opening statement in Gallag, which is welcome before repeating in English. The Parliament is arranging for the official report of the meeting to be translated into Gallag, so it will be accessible to those in the Gallag community. I now invite Mary McInnes to make her statement in Gallag and then in English. Good morning. Maddenwa, yn eich gyrm, y brân, sef y gwneud i wysglu i ddweud y cwmant eisiau, ac ysgwrs gychaf fforddiau i'r dynus y byd a ha'r coed ag sicrhusia. Ys mis ymarfyn i'ch gynhywys, ac ysgwys i'i cari i'r Bordna Gallag. Ys gondoddiwm ha'r sefyll swanol, a ha'na studiwd i'r ffordd i'r ffordd, ac ysgwys i'ch gwrtio'ch i'n iawn i'ch gynhywlau'n a ha'na studiwd i'r Lysachu i'r gwrt. Shef urwm ac ysgwyr yma hawn gwneud y bydd ar bialoddiw, ac ysgwys i'ch ha'r caerwch cwtrimwch gyfel si'n eu geisio'ch gydych chi'n hachwys i'r eraill, ac ysgwys i'r holl gweith edrych fflannu nasiant ysgwys i'r son y gallag. Shef bwy un popolwch le'i'r Lysans yn mor ar han y borst yn gallu, ha'r sgwp ychgymabig a'r si'n eu hefyd bwy yn rech ar angen hefyd hefyd blyny le oedd o'ch ysgwys yn Lysachu yn y gallu. Ca' angen y gwyllwch, le'r lwg, ac ysgwys i'r llwg ffordd i'n gynhywlau chi'n. Lys ysgwys i'n ha'na hamysyn ar ysnodol o'n a ha'n anlau i'r bwy yn i'r fwy mor, ac ystyn lan y ffaas, ac asyn dylan Johnach yr Llyw i ychydig yr osyn. Good morning, convener, committee members and anyone else who may be watching or listening. I'm Lady MacKinnis, I'm the chair of Portnigallig, I've been the chair for over four years now. And with me today are Jim Huanol, the director of education for Portnigallig, on my left Ian McMillan, who is director of development. I'm the seventh chairperson of the board, and the board has been in existence for around about 16 years now. So Portnigallig is a public body with significant responsibilities, a very small team to deliver them. It's the first statutory body in four years with responsibility for developing Gallig, a language which has suffered from unhelpful legislation in the past. As such, the aims and the expectations which the organisation Portnigallig carries are significant and continue to increase. In providing evidence to you today around the draft plan, I am pleased to say that Portnigallig, as the auditor general recently noted, is a hugely different organisation today to that which received a very challenging audit report several years ago. The board was considered an example of best practice by our own auditors at the turn of this year. Today, then, we value your input into the national consultation. We are taking the draft plan around the country for people at every level to input into the consultation. To us, that is a huge opportunity, and we see it as a very important and huge opportunity for this committee to feed into the draft national plan. It is the plan that will run for the next five years, starting in 2023. I would like to hand over to you now so that we can continue with the discussion. As you are attending remotely, Ruth, you might not be able to catch my eye, so if you want to have a supplementary or anything that you want to chip in, can you put an R in the chat box? Thanks, the clerks will be monitoring that, and I will bring you in when I can. We will go around some of the questions now, and the first MSP to bring in is Michael Marra. Thank you, convener, and thank you to the members of the board for attending today. The early years of devolution post-1999 were marked by some level of anxiety around the long-term future of Gaelic as a key component of our national culture. That led to the Gaelic Language Act 2005, which established the board in 2006. How would you say that the board has performed against the desired outcomes that were set out in the act in 2006? The board is still young. It has been in existence for about 15 or 16 years, and that in terms of the law and the act and development is relatively short. Particularly, there are a variety of approaches. The board in itself and also how the board engages with the wider country and all its stakeholders. The board in itself has taken time to settle, and it is no secret that it received a very challenging report around about the 1819, and, as a result of that, there was a serious implementation plan, a huge improvement plan, and that has all been signed off. The board today is a very different organisation, completely focused, has a clearer understanding, and is closer to its communities. In many ways, the opportunities of technology have been hugely grasped by the board, particularly during the lockdown period, and we saw a big shift in how the board enacted and communicated with the communities that it serves, so there's been a huge step change there. In terms of the act and what it allows the board to do, we are becoming more and more conscious that more needs to be done. The act needs to be strengthened in our view, the board's powers need to be strengthened in our view, particularly language plans. The national plan belongs to the country, but the board has the responsibility for writing it, preparing it, consulting on it and then presenting it to the Government. The national plan is the big picture, but underneath that, there is a need for a much more concerted effort at planning level across the country to achieve faster and richer improvement in Gaelic. That is very useful. I would appreciate it if other members in the panel had comments on that. Any observation that you have to set at the scene about what you think the long-term prospects are of Gaelic and the Gaelic language, so increasing the use of Gaelic is certainly at the core of your functions and in that. Where are we as a country in terms of not just preserving but promoting and enhancing the use of the language? Yes, I am going to make my colleagues work as well today. It is a very exciting time for Gaelic. The new plan is coming at a timely, that is huge ambition. There are probably two or three things that are key. One prime one is education, which is of big interest to this committee, and a gym will expand on that shortly. The other one is about general development, community, the plan's process itself, and I will call on Ian to feed in a little bit on that. Just today, there is a very important report coming out, which is the Scottish Social Attitude Survey. The Scottish Social Attitude has very positive messages. With your permission, ElectroCon and Gym, I want to give a very quick summary of where we have come with education. I have an instruction to be very quick, and I will do that as quickly as I can. If we look at the progress from the early 80s when there were a handful of children in Gaelic medium education, which was seen as a revolutionary thing and something that was not even particularly tested in this country, that has moved on now. It is interesting in your briefing report. Gaelic medium education now features within statistical evidence within Scotland. 1% of all children in Gaelic medium education in education in Scotland are educated through the medium of Gaelic. We need to make more progress on that. I mean Scotland, I mean the country. Bordna Gaelic has a very narrow level of ability to influence big issues. Delivery of education resides with local authorities. We promote and we encourage local authorities to provide more opportunities for Gaelic medium education. A majority of local authorities in Scotland either have Gaelic medium education or are developing it, and we are seeing new authorities coming on stream. East Wren will be the next one next year and Wren Frew in August. We are doing work with Fife and are very confident that Fife will also come on stream. I think that there has been a huge growth in learners and learners have moved from traditional delivery perhaps around night classes to much greater online access. Speak Gaelic football is just under 400K, which is massive for the language. When you look at the percentage of people who have Gaelic language skills in our country, dual lingo has been a huge success and in a comparative way with other languages and international bases. Planning has developed so that all local authorities apart from two are either have a Gaelic language plan or are in the process of developing a Gaelic language plan. Our view would be that significant changes would be required in Gaelic language planning nationally. We have a number of ideas around that. Visibility of the language has completely changed. Organisations such as Police Scotland, the Ambulance Service and the railway system we note from young kids in Gaelic medium education that they now see Gaelic as part of their lives throughout the country and that is anecdotally something that we heard from young kids in Kilmarnock saying for the first time ever they'd seen Gaelic in Kilmarnock and they hadn't really thought about it before. Sadly they didn't know Kilmarnock. The word Kilmarnock was a Gaelic word and they didn't know that that's the place they lived in, had a Gaelic place name and that's quite common in Glasgow. Visibility has increased, Gaelic medium education has increased and for the first time ever Gaelic medium is now available internationally. The first Gaelic medium service opened in Mabu in Nova Scotia in 2021 and got a lot of support from us in terms of developing that and that shows international confidence in the language as well, which is really, really gratifying. I'd like to call Ian just to quickly outline the survey and that is being issued today, the social attitude survey, comment or two please. Yes, I think in terms of evidence that there is improvement. I think the Scottish social attitude survey does show significant improvement and I think the last time the survey was run was 2012 and there's been significant change, for example more than half of those surveyed, 55 per cent believe that all children in Scotland between the ages of five and fifteen should be taught Gaelic as a school subject for between one or two hours a week. Nearly two thirds said that they would like to improve their own Gaelic skills and 70 per cent stated that learning Gaelic gives someone a sense of achievement and contributing to the wellbeing agenda. The proportion of adults, I think as Jim was saying, that I've seen Gaelic signage and that I'm aware of Gaelic through the media has been growing quite significantly. The proportion of adults who say they can understand a little bit of Gaelic has increased from 25 per cent to 41 per cent. The proportion who say they can speak some words of Gaelic has doubled from 15 per cent to 13 per cent. So I think there is evidence to show that there is movement in the right direction but I think it's also safe to say that there is more work to be done and there is there's probably a need to be doing different work in different areas particularly in the areas of the country where Gaelic has its traditional heartlands and that there is a challenge in these areas in particular just because of the economic and other challenges that have been faced by those communities. The interesting thing is that while Gaelic may have been considered a marginal issue in those communities in the past or a more marginal issue that Gaelic is actually moving to the centre of the challenges or maybe to the centre of the solutions that are available for our traditional Gaelic community. So I think that while there is a big challenge there in recognising that challenge there's also a big opportunity for us to do something different and to do something about it. I would say that opportunity award was probably my reading of the social attitudes survey. I mean there seemed to mean that there was demand in the population so people and actually I think a welcome acceptance perhaps of Gaelic as a part of national culture and that people felt they should be promoted which is in my view a very positive thing. But do we have the resources and do you have the authority as a board to try and meet that demand? I think you probably know what I'm going to say. Gaelic needs more resources and the board gets a very small percentage of the whole Gaelic budget but all of Gaelic needs more resources. We are also conscious that resources are tight at the minute so we need to look at other ways of developing and moving forward without always looking for more resources and I think that's one of the tools we have for that is looking at how the plans can be used. The national plan gives the big picture but the ones that are the real toolkits are the plans that all the national bodies and the local authorities will have and ensuring that they are smarter and that there is a clearer understanding around the expectation from them I think is a very clear and definite way. At the moment the board does not have the responsibility or the ownership of the plans. If targets are not met, if ambitions are not achieved we refer them to the minister and we've started doing that for the first time. We have developed over time ourselves and are beginning to realise we need to be really taking a hard line on many things because things at various levels are not moving fast enough so how that will look we have thoughts on that too and particularly in terms of strengthening the powers of the board through the act and we are conscious that the functions and structures of the board are on the programme for government list so it is a good time to be looking at that and I think my answer to your question is we need more resources we are also pragmatic so we need to look at other approaches and we have thoughts around that. Thank you, thanks computer. Thank you very much, Michael. I've got something to follow up on that actually, Mary. You spoke there about strengthening the powers of the board and using it. How do you see that developing and what would you like to see developing in terms of that? I'm going to colony and do it, sir. I think that's what you call a hospital, Patsy. I think the biggest challenge that we've faced, I mean I've worked in the public sector now for nearly 40 years and I've yet to come across a public sector body that couldn't do with more resources to do with what we want to do but I think the challenge for Gordon Macalloch at the moment is that we are required to work collaboratively with a whole range of organisations, a whole range of people, sometimes with very conflicting priorities in these groups and communities. I think where we do have the planning mechanism, for example, we do need to be able to strengthen that. I'll maybe be a bit cheeky just now, convener, and I apologise for the cheeky bit, but it's a good example. As you mentioned at the beginning, we're not able to conduct today's meeting in Galloch. We will be probably subject to a lot of criticism for what we say or what we don't say today. The biggest criticism that we will face is the fact that we did not conduct ourselves today at this committee about the Galloch language in the language. While the Parliament has a language plan, the language plan is an approved language plan, and it allows the discretion of the convener in terms of using Galloch for us to give evidence in Galloch. However, when we're actually conducting business, when we're talking about Galloch, when Galloch is the subject, there should be no discretion. I think that if we are seriously going to take Galloch seriously, we shouldn't have that discretion exercised when the subject is Galloch. Again, it's not a criticism, but it's just the reality of where we are. We need to take a step forward and a step up in terms of us making the best use of the tools that we have at the moment. We're trying to get this message across in our consultation events. There is criticism that the Galloch language act isn't strong enough, and there are a lot of different opinions on that, but we have to make sure that we use the Galloch language act to the full extent to make sure that the Galloch language plan that we have for the next five years is as robust and practical as it can actually be. We have regulations, and we need to use them more. We need to find the right balance between working collaboratively with partners and using their legislation and the regulations. In the past, we've tended maybe not to do that, to rely more on the collaboration and to keep trying to discuss things to a conclusion rather than using the regulations. We've actually found it very effective in recent months in discussions with other public sector organisations to say, well, okay, if we can't come to an agreement within the required timescale, we have no option but to refer this to minister. It works for most. It doesn't work for all, but it's something that we need to be more focused on in using all the tools that we have. I think that it's something that we are learning more of. We've had more younger people coming out to our consultation events on the next Galloch language plan. The next generation of people, or maybe the generation behind that from my generation, are maybe not quite as polite as our generation has been in terms of accepting things, not quite as accepting. They are expecting a lot more from us as a public body, probably from the Parliament as a Parliament, from the Government as a Government. We have to respond to that, and our communities, the communities that we work in and represent, are becoming more vocal and their expectations are getting higher. Thank you for that, Ian. I appreciate the comments. Can I move on to questions now from Ross Greer? Go back to the publication of the current period, 18 to 23. It was supposed to be an implementation plan published with that, but that wasn't the case. There were other plans, such as your corporate plan, in some respect, resembled an implementation plan. Do you think that the lack of that implementation plan has stymied the ability to fulfil all the ambitions of the current national plan? No, I think that it is a different understanding of how we work. The corporate plan came out of the national plan and out of that came the operational plan. What is becoming clearer towards across the country is that the national plan belongs to all of the country, and that the operational plan is the part that Portnagallic itself delivers, and that it delivers it with partners. There are targets in it, and these have been met, and that will be evaluated. It is being evaluated now, and that is not yet finished, because we are at an interim stage with that, and the plan still runs until the end of this year. Do you want to add anything to that? I understand the comment about the implementation plan. I think that the intention was what was put in place was the faster rate of progress initiative, which was led by the Deputy First Minister. The purpose of the faster rate of progress initiative was to bring the bodies together that are required to collaborate to deliver on some of the outcomes that are required in the plan. I think that rather than an implementation plan, because it is not just a plan for one body, that the implementation plan itself is not a straightforward thing, it needs to be a bit more holistic. I think that the faster rate of progress was put in place for that to take place. Whether that has been successful in delivering the same outcomes or not is maybe another question. Just to add to that, I think that the faster rate of progress is a key element in terms of this much greater understanding that the requires to be that, born a Gaelic with a staff team of around 25 people and 19 per cent of the budget cannot deliver the national plan and should not deliver the national plan because it is the national plan. It is not born a Gaelic's Gaelic plan, it is the national plan. That stat I gave you earlier on with 30 of the 32 authorities either having Gaelic language plans or in the process of creating them. That is definitely a role for us to be working with these local authorities, for instance in education, because local authorities deliver education. If there is a target in the national plan to increase the number of young people in Gaelic medium education, Bordd Nagalic cannot order that to happen. The Scottish Government cannot order that to happen, but a set of organisations, GTCS, Education Scotland, local authorities, Stirland Nationality, which is the national agency that looks at Gaelic medium resources, the whole variety of organisations, they are in charge with delivering that. That raises some quite complex issues. Without casting any comment on whether that is right or wrong, Glasgow as a local authority has a cap on Gaelic medium education. Approximately 180 children have applied for P1, and the authority has decided that there will be a cap on Gaelic medium education at 140. Not saying that is right or wrong or making any judgment on it is simply a matter of fact. That impacts on the national plan, because if the national plan says that we should increase the opportunity and the range of Gaelic medium facilities, there is an example of whether an authority has made a decision that that will not happen within that authority at a certain level. I am trying to be very careful not to comment on the internal reasons why that cap exists, because I think that there are balanced arguments between whether that is a good thing or a bad thing in terms of the actual cap. It is the statement of fact that the board does not have the ability to say that it cannot have a cap or that it must do this or that it must do that. It is based on the Gaelic language plan for Glasgow, which will come up for review. Another example is learning the language. We are working with local authorities on targets for L3. L3 in Scotland has seen a decline in terms of Gaelic, and we as a country really need to reflect on our performance as a country in comparison with Wales or Ireland in terms of learning the language. We do not do well as a country regarding that. We are working through GLPs, which is practically the only way that we can really work Gaelic language plans with local authorities. Recently, for instance, I am talking last month or two, through some quite challenging discussions with North Lanarkshire as an example, a target of 40 per cent was agreed for L3. That means that just over 50 primary schools in North Lanark, through the lifetime of the next Gaelic language plan for North Lanark, will develop in just over 50 primary schools Gaelic as an L3. That is a huge advance for the language in North Lanark. It is a big task for the local authorities. It is a very challenging target for the local authority. Absolutely hats off to them for ultimately agreeing to that target. That will require a whole set of other organisations, Education Scotland, a range of other organisations to support in terms of resources and training for teachers to enable them to do that. Those things are quite complex, but they influence each other. That is a particularly good example, which we will be working with other local authorities on in terms of targets for L3. In the end, if an authority, as the chair said, is in authority, and there are some examples live where authorities are not willing to meet the challenges that North Lanarkshire has met, and they are not willing to do that. Our only recourse is simply to refer that to Scottish ministers. There are no enforcement powers or anything like that, as there would be in other countries. That is a thing for Scotland to reflect upon. Should there be enforcement powers and where should they lie if that were to happen? I think that you are getting the picture that Gaelic development is a very complex landscape. The consultation on the next national plan is open until 26 July. We would welcome your contributions either as individuals or as a committee or under any other hat that you would like to submit online. We would really welcome that, and again, we would like to thank you. We would be very happy to hear your suggestions today as well. What struck me particularly from the latter part of Jim's answer was the importance to the success of your ambitions of the local authorities, GLPs, but I presume that there is no synchronisation. There are all setting them at different times in the cycle. You have a relatively standardised five-year rolling plan to develop. You have 32 different local authorities setting them for different periods of time at different points in time. How does that impact on your ability to set a five-year national plan? That is a really difficult question. I am going to get Ian to answer that one. He is new in the job. He is new in the job. Give the new guy all the difficult questions. There is a challenge in that, but again, there is also an opportunity as well. I think that a lot of it comes back to the hope that we are starting to see coming through in the attitudes of people and the knowledge of people. There are more and more people now who want to see garlic increase in garlic improving. That, in a way, should put some pressure on the individual public authorities, as should the plans. I mean the way that I work in local government long enough to know that if peer pressure is quite a significant and a useful tool, if it is used in the right way to encourage growth and increase. There are opportunities in the different timescales in which to grow and to crank things up year on year. I do not think that we maybe have not had the same hope and expectation coming from the people of Scotland that we do now. Maybe there is an opportunity in that to use that to encourage. As Jim used the example of North Lanarkshire, in reality that should give us a spur. My experience always was that if one local authority takes an action, then other local authorities would be looking to improve and to go one step further. We should be looking to see to make the most of that opportunity. In some cases, we just have to work with whatever cycles the other public bodies are working with. While there are challenges, there are opportunities. Particularly over the lockdown period, the board has worked closely with key garlic organisations, and Deputy First Minister, MSPs and the cross-party committee have reached out in a way that has not happened before. We get the message from our community as we have been going around the country with this consultation, and we have been far and wide that people are really sitting up and taking an interest, particularly the attendance by young people, and that is people who have come through garlic media themselves, who are also seeing the wider thing. This particularly goes back to roundabout the traditional communities. Garlic as a language does not stand alone. It needs a house. It needs a ferry. It needs a road. It needs a strong economy. We are now looking at garlic as something that probably glues all these things together, but garlic life is just normal life. It is important that we are listening and we are hearing that from people. We are taking those messages to the Government and to the Parliament, and this is a huge opportunity for us and for you to feed that into the national plan, because the language needs everything else for it to move forward and to develop. Can we move over to Ruth Maguire, who is joining us virtually? Thank you, Ruth Maguire. Thank you, convener. My name is Matyn Vaughan. I am a Gwylshiff Collarain. I am a Christian Ackerman, a fallen garlic. Good morning. I am really glad that you are with us today. I have got some questions about garlic education. Before I begin, I just want to agree with the comments about the use of garlic in the Parliament. I am sorry that you have not been able to give your evidence on garlic. I do not think that it is good enough that Scotland's Parliament can conduct its business in Scotland's language. One of the great successes has been garlic medium education in terms of growth. I should declare an interest that both my children, although I have grown up now, were educated at Scotland's garlic Glasgow for primary and secondary school. I am an Ayrshire MSP now, and I am delighted that we have a primary school in the winning. It is parents that drive that. It is not bodies. The parents start the nurseries and play groups, and then the demand grows from the community, which I think is part of the success. I ask what the overall goal is for the breadth of access to garlic medium education. Jim Wannall spoke a little bit about the role of the board, but if he could expand on that a bit for me, that would be helpful. The vision that we would have is quite simple and quite clear. Everybody who wishes to have their child educated through the medium of garlic should have that opportunity. It is not complex. It is not difficult. The complexity is in the delivery of that. That would be our vision. Our view is that there should be much wider realisation across Scotland that, in this country, we deliver education in the medium of two languages, and parents make a decision, make an option at the age of five, normally, which language they would like their child to be educated in. They have two choices, either through English or either through garlic. That means, consequent to that, that a set of national agencies have tasks and responsibilities to ensure that that is deliverable and local authorities have that as a task, that that is deliverable across the country. There should be no postcode lottery as to whether you can or cannot access gaelic medium education. We, as I have said already, a majority of local authorities now either are delivering or are preparing the delivery of gaelic medium education. There is a whole range of other things happening, which require a lot of focused attention. Teaching, force development is a key element, and we are seeing that where there is demand for gaelic medium education, for instance in rural areas, marries are already mentioned there, housing, transport, those kinds of things. We have currently an application on the statutory guidance on apple cross, to use that as an example. The local authority have advertised, have not been able to appoint, and they are about to go to re-advertisement. A majority of the parents in the local community are seeking gaelic medium education for their children for the first time ever. We are supportive of that, and I am actually meeting with those parents tomorrow night. We will continue to support and encourage that development. However, the creation of gaelic medium education in an area of apple cross is not a simple task. It does require somebody to be attracted to what is a relatively remote part of Scotland. They need to have housing, they need to have other sorts of supports, and they need to be ready to do that. That requires some additional thought. Carlianna Gaelthog, the Highland Council, is very actively involved in promoting that and trying to address those issues. However, that is not necessarily as easy to deliver as it may be, for instance, in Glasgow or Edinburgh. There are specific difficulties in Glasgow and Edinburgh around the very large number of people who are seeking gaelic medium education. One of the issues to be cognisant about is that the delivery of education responsibility for that lies with local authorities. That is the key mechanism that we need to access to ensure that gaelic language plans and the ability of the local authorities and the willingness of the local authorities are really obvious to us all. One of the things that we as a board do, and we have become far more active over the past number of years in doing this, is responding to public consultations. If anybody wants to see the large amount of work that we have been doing in terms of public consultations, they are all on our website. For instance, there are so many examples, but recovery from Covid-19, we responded to all public consultations and that was a specific focus on gaelic medium education and what we would expect and support and encourage local authorities to be doing. GTCS has just in January, there was a public consultation about registration of teachers and that raises some really important issues about additionality for our gaelic medium workforce who do not have recognised additionality in terms of registration of the GTCS and we are proposing very specific things about that. Professor Muir has done a massive amount of work in terms of his reports and the subsequent things that are happening within the whole national framework of educational organisations. We have responded to all consultations and continue to do that to ensure that there is an understanding that gaelic medium education is part of the Scottish national delivery of education and that is a crucial element that there is much wider understanding that when any organisation is set up, for instance the new qualifications organisation, that the organisation is set up with a perspective for both delivery through the medium of English and through the medium of gaelic and that would be the prism through which we would look at all development, that there is a firm understanding that young people in Scotland, families seeking education who are registering for education, they have the ability and the competence to do that choosing either gaelic medium or English medium delivery and that does raise some questions and some challenging questions for authorities like Edinburgh and Glasgow who are having difficulty in delivering those responsibilities but nevertheless we're here to provide professional advice and support whenever we can about that. Ruth, sorry. Thank you. How close are local authorities to ensuring that the gaelic medium education is available in this quoting from the papers here? Fifty civil parishes with five per cent or more gaelic speakers. Eighty three per cent is the current stat. Parish boundaries and school catchment boundaries aren't the same so it's a bit of looking at and our stats officer has recently looked at that to update awareness of that so the current stat is eighty three per cent and that means that within those parishes there is either gaelic medium education or it's close by and that still means there are 17 per cent that we would encourage local communities to look at gaelic medium education. Applecross is just a really nice example because there we have a situation where the local authority, the board, the local community is actively seeking to develop a new service in quite a challenging and quite remote part of Scotland even if somebody lives quite close by, if anybody knows Applecross and the drive into Applecross. During the winter that's going to be quite difficult if somebody doesn't actually live in that community. Nevertheless we are all working together to try and deliver that and that is still a challenge so those kinds of complexities around housing, around transport, around the willingness sometimes of people to relocate. Ardna Murrachan is another area where there is a demand for gaelic medium education and there are significant staffing gaps and there are significant staffing gaps in Glasgow so it's not to say that that isn't the case in urban local authorities because you need to reference that against the demand which is very high in some urban local authorities but in terms of that specific question eighty three per cent. Ruth Davidson, do you have the example of Applecross there? Applecross, are there five per cent or more gaelic speakers in Applecross? I need to just check. I'm 98 per cent certain yes that is the case because the start would be 2011 census not the current one and I'm sure Applecross is one of those areas. If it's not, it's beside. Around adult learners, can you say a bit about the discrepancy between the number of adult learners reported by the board on reports for 2015 to 2019 and the numbers reported for online resources? That's quite a complex picture. You can see the numbers for adult learners in the 2015 to 2019 period. The acquire of statistics has been quite complicated within both adult learning and in terms of gaelic medium education itself. For instance, with gaelic medium education, we conducted what essentially was a national survey and that did throw up some interesting things. Sometimes, for instance, in one year a local team would register a child in gaelic medium although they were also attending English medium early years provision for instance, so they would make a personal decision as to whether, because they had morning sessions in gaelic and afternoon sessions in English, which system they were registering in and then they might change their mind the year after and that would look as if there had been some decrease in gaelic medium and that wasn't the case. That's because the uplift of stats was through surveys which the board conducted. We're moving away from that and we're now working with Scottyx ed and we're working on national stats and we will work. The national stats that we will produce will be Scottyx ed material. Scottyx ed did not always uplift the required materials that we would need, but the team have been very open to changing that so that will happen. There will be an interim period where we will have an interim report using Scottyx ed GME stats and then we will refine that because they have already agreed to change that. In terms of online learning and gaelic learning, that is a kind of similar picture. Those stats were resultant from research that we did across local authorities and that's dependent upon local authority uplifts because there isn't registration in the same sort of way and that is always going to be difficult to do because that's dependent on the accuracy of services within local authorities, which sometimes are not local authority services any longer. For instance, Glasgow Life would run evening and weekend courses in the language and they would record certain stats around that and that would be a picture across the country and different local authorities. What we can do from other sources such as online, speak gaelic for instance, which is just under 400k footfall across social media platforms. They also measure how long people are on those platforms. It's not just accidental entry on to the longevity of the stay that can be mentioned, it can be assessed as well. Learn gaelic also has stats, which are very encouraging. They showed a big increase during lockdown, which again is quite interesting when people at the time, the opportunity, they were very up for doing this. Other things happened whenever lockdowns came to an end, but that was quite an interesting thing when we saw the change. One of the questions that the reflective challenge questions for the country is how do we capitalise on that clear evidence that people online want to learn the language and how do we capitalise on that through other opportunities to learn the language, sometimes face-to-face, and that's more difficult to deliver because that is dependent upon face-to-face opportunities and tutors and that We do know that local authorities, as with teaching teachers and early years workers, are having difficulty in recruiting enough tutors to keep up with demand. That's again a task for local authorities to seek support from ourselves as the specialist agency, but also looking for additional resources on questions. Thank you, Jim. On that subject, can I ask Colcab Stewart to come in? I think that she's got some questions relating to that. Thank you very much. Yes, that's the perfect place for me to pick up on. I just wanted to go into that. You've talked about the challenges of recruitment of teachers, so I just want could one of you or all of you make any comment and give us further information about what is being done to attract, to retain, to train in order to increase the number of Gallic teachers. Thank you. I think that's definitely a question for Jim. He's the director of education. Yes, we, Board of Gallic, run a number of initiatives and I'll run through some of them, but prefaced by the responsibility for employing, recruiting and employing all teachers' lives with local authorities. The responsibility for registration lies with the GTCS. The responsibility for support and development lies with agencies such as Education Scotland, SQA, who provide support and development. So there's a whole range of responsibilities that feed from the national plan and it's absolutely crucial to establish that from the onset. As I've said, an organisation of 25 people cannot reverse 400 years of decline in the Gallic language in Scotland. It can provide expertise and really important developments for that but, nevertheless, that's the big picture. Those major organisations whose responsibility is to deliver the national plan. In terms of some of the things that the boards have been doing, we run an education grant scheme. Anybody who's registering in a Gallic-related course can apply for attractive funding from us and numbers for that. The uptake of that scheme continues to be very healthy, so any student teacher on an ITE programme, for instance, is able to apply for that. Strathclyde University has recently been funded to run an additional teaching qualification pilot and that is being done with Glasgow and North Lanark and Western Bartonshire, where modern languages teachers will undertake a course and that will enable them to be successful on completion of it. They'll be able to register as with Gallic as part of the modern languages component in their school. We've fully funded that pilot on the condition that all schools and local authorities agree to input Gallic into the curriculum offer. In Western Bartonshire, St Peter the Apostle, as an example, there is a teacher, and there are teachers six, I think, from Glasgow, different secondary schools in Glasgow and in North Lanarkshire, two secondary schools. On completion of the course, Gallic will become part of the modern languages curriculum offer. That will enable a national deficit to start to be altered because if we get more young people in our schools acquiring national five and Gallic learners, they are then going to get degrees, they then hopefully might choose a job in Gallic major education and that will help local authorities to fill their vacancies. We need a second wave. I noticed in Ireland and Wales, particularly in Ireland, when Irish visitors came to Scotland, that they were quite jealous of the fact that the vast majority of our workforce had Gallic as a first language in Gallic major education. We were quite jealous when we went to Ireland and Wales that they had a very significant proportion of Welsh and Irish learners in their workforce because they had attracted two labour markets into their workforce. We in Scotland have historically not been able to do that very well, so that opens up that opportunity. We also support through a funding scheme immersion courses for teachers. There are three immersion facilities, Glasgow University, SMO and Lewis Castle, which is a new name in the Western Isles. They run year-long immersion courses. If a local authority has a teacher who is an English medium who has a beginning level of Gallic, we pay 80 per cent of the supply costs for them to come on that course for a year on the guarantee that they move into employment in Gallic major education straight away thereafter. That provides another opportunity for local authorities. Every application for immersion has been accepted and has been delivered. Numbers are quite small. Covid-19 has impacted on that because some authorities have not permitted any teacher to come out for a year to go on an immersion course. We hope that the numbers will return to some greater health as Covid-19 recedes. That is just an example of some of the things that we are doing as a board, but the big picture is local authority. I live in a very small community. I live in Newest in the Western Isles and recruitment and retention is a serious problem, particularly in middle to upper management. If there are vacancies across the country as there are many, we become fearful that someone from our community will leave and go because it is increasingly difficult to recruit people to the remote communities, as Jim has said. Again, that goes back to the point that not one size fits all. It is not only in teaching but also in various other jobs that are gaelic essential management jobs. We see that at the board itself, that the difficulty of recruiting enough is people who are skilled. If you are taking from one, you are leaving a hole somewhere else. It is a problem and it is a challenge. We would certainly like to hear any input that you would want in terms of helping us to find a way forward for that. We will continue on the theme. I have some questions from Bob Doris. David Cameron was asking about staffing and recruitment. Earlier on, I think that Jim Wanle was talking about demand, outstripping and supply, not just in terms of staffing but in terms of infrastructure. As a Glasgow MSP, I was interested to hear that there were 180 requests for a primary school P1 placement but 140 places available. I know that Glasgow City Council has a draft Gaelic language plan out for consultation at the moment. We will see that a fourth primary school will come online in 2024. Can I ask whether local authorities are authority to what the relationship is between the board and them in relation to their forward planning, not just for making sure that there is sufficient staffing but sufficient infrastructure there? I am conscious that, as a constituent of the MSP, every year I get requests for letters of support for appeals, for placement requests, particularly for primary school education in the Gaelic medium. Any information on that relationship between the local authority is support, the communication and the quality of the forward planning of each local authority to meet that demand of interest. Any comments about that would be helpful for me as a Glasgow MSP. Absolutely, there is a whole range of it. We provide continuous professional support and advice, that is one of our roles. We work closely with Glasgow, we work closely with a range of local authorities and we work with Common Emparent National and Common Emparent is organised in local groups as well, so we work with the Common Emparent Glasgow, the local group there as well. Obviously, our role is professional support and advice. We have no power to instruct a local authority to do anything. We simply encourage and further to encouragement we can give them opportunities and advice on what might be the way forward. In terms of, for instance, the current issue in Glasgow, that went to statutory review under the statutory guidance and it went to a full assessment. Part of our responsibility as an organisation, along with Education Scotland and Common Emparent National, is to provide a response to the local authority. We provided a very in-depth response to the local authority. They decided to do something else, which was not necessarily in sync with the formal responses from Bordna Gallach, Education Scotland or Common Emparent, but that is our role to do that. I think that there are complexities in the Glasgow situation that we will continue to work with the local authority on. However, the local authority is fully aware that, in terms of our view as a board, we do not agree with CAPS on Gallach major of education. Can I just check one thing, though? When the fourth school comes online, hopefully, on schedule for 2024, would that meet the current demand retrospectively, of course, that we are seeing at the moment. I get when 2024 comes along, the demand may be greater again, so the local authorities are always playing catch-up infrastructure in relation to that demand, so will 2024 meet that demand? Can I ask that you be really, really brief with that answer, because we've got a list of other people wanting to ask? No, one needs to be done, because the reason that the authority is cited where they're coming from is about capacity in the secondary sector, S1 to S6. In short, authorities that are very successful in developing Gallach major of education need to continue that success, so the fifth school needs planned at this point. Thank you very much for that, because I've got questions still on the subject from Stephanie Callhan before we move on to the other members. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener, and thanks for being here this morning panel. As the Constituent's MSP for Odinson and Bells Hill Constituent, I'm absolutely delighted to hear the positive talk around North Lancer Council, and it's great that they've committed to such challenging targets there. I think that a lot of local people maybe don't recognise that names like Airdrie and Glen Boyge come from Gallach and that the 11th or 12th century then predominantly bespoke Gallach too, so we maybe forget that in the central belt of Scotland there. I'm really interested as well in the fact that there's that commitment in the NLC documents to equal respect. For Gaelic in English, and Jim said that everyone who wishes to have their children educated in Gaelic can do, that that's the aim. So what I'm wondering is how far along the road does North Lancer Council's plan and commitments just now take us if they're successful actually achieving that? How far does that get us towards that aim of parents being able to choose at age five? It absolutely does in terms of Gaelic medium education, and I met with Common Apparent Lancer Coutou, so it's the North Lancer Common Apparent group. One of the key things in the North Lancer plan is that North Lancer works with parents and with Common Apparent and Lancer Coutou. That will be a key element because there are a number of commitments in the plan from the council and their full realisation will only take place if that's done in part. The local authority works in partnership with Common Apparent and Lancer Coutou and we will support the local authority and Common Apparent and Lancer Coutou to deliver that, but yes the plan includes things which will definitely move Gaelic medium education on if they're delivered in that manner. So, just to be quite specific then, would you expect a bit of a point for example where once this plan concludes that the next plan actually is looking at parents having that choice from five years of age, would you expect it to move that quickly, or is it something that's going to take a bit longer than that? No, I would expect that to move. Our view would be that within North Lancershire if a family selects Gaelic medium education they have the ability to get that. What that might entail is travel and that might be a disincentive, so if there are more services in North Lanark as there have been in Glasgow where there's a whole range of services, the need for travel decreases, therefore the services themselves have become more attractive, therefore the numbers going up, in Glasgow we see that, the numbers going up wanting to access services that are more attractive, that will be the challenge for North Lancershire to develop new services, they will become more attractive, they will then have more people accessing them, but that's good for the language and it's good for North Lanark. Thanks very much and thanks for what you do for the language, as I can tell by your passion and enthusiasm this morning that you're great advocates for it. I think we all feel a bit uncomfortable that we're not conducting this session in the language and I think it's a bit of an insult and to be honest we don't need to repeat this again and if I was you I'd be a little less diplomatic about that, but nevertheless let's move on. I'm interested in the wider community engagement, from what I understand we're making good progress at getting more learners, but we're not making much progress when people are speaking it at home and I'm just wondering what you think you can do to make sure that we can make that kind of progress. You're looking at me. I think a lot of it is about confidence, hugely about confidence and also about success and success breeds success and the things that we are hearing about today is all about success, but with success comes challenge and then comes opportunity and so on. There's not a straight answer to that but as more and more people are educated in the language they themselves will have confidence and the other one of the challenges is the learner versus the native speaker, which is the gym versus myself type of scenario and there needs to be a balance. As in the communities there needs to be a balance as well. As we have been talking to many communities across the country, everyone respects and values the other. The rural communities, which are very sparsely populated, need people but need policies that will make that change. So it's about economy, it's about impact of Gaelic and it's about developing these communities that they will have a confidence and in that confidence they will be speaking the language, singing the language and seeing the economic impact of it and we do see that. We particularly see that in our rural communities. The board has something like maybe 50 officers, many of them are, most of them are at work in the Western Isles and they are speaking the language with the young people, much more needs to be done but we think we are breaking the back of it but more needs to be done and we are getting a better understanding. The board is also getting closer to the communities and we are then able to bring the messages from the communities to the Parliament as we are doing to you today. So I think it's just a progressive thing. There's not a straight answer but I think it's a case of keep going, building confidence, showing what the difference is and telling the stories. I think there's a bit of attention between those traditional communities who have spoken the language and those who, with the initiative to spread the language across the country, you already talked about potentially losing a teacher from your community who would go off and teach elsewhere. Is that resented locally that somehow they will lose out because of the success of the language elsewhere? I think he ends itching to get in here so I'm going to let him have a go. I think yes. Are there tensions? I think tensions have been created. Are there differences? Yes, there are differences. I think that Gaelic is a very interesting language and it is interesting the discussion when it comes round to learners and native speakers. I too am from a Gaelic community, Gaelic is my first language and like a lot of people I wasn't working in Gaelic until very recently. For someone who was brought up in the language in a community and with a tradition where we were told constantly that to get on in life we had to get up and get out, we had to set the language aside and focus on English. There was a lack of confidence. I know that from my own experience. I was intimidated by people who'd learned the language and who knew more words than I did. Who knew the vocabulary. Who knew the technical bits, which I still don't know and I never will know. But I can speak the language comfortably and as I use it more I am becoming more used to doing that. So we have people like myself in the position that I was intimidated by people who've learned the language. We have people who've learned the language intimidated by the fact that there are people like me who have no problem with the sounds and who can speak to our hearts content and we are quite comfortable to speak. So you have this strange situation where you have two sides if you like who think that the other is better off and better than them. It's the only language that I know where people are obsessive about correctness in terms of speaking it. And if we were as obsessive as our English and our use of English, none of us would speak it. And I think that there is a need. There is definitely a different need in our traditional communities to do something different, to raise that confidence. But it is connected with everything, with everything else. And I don't think it's not that there is attention. It's just how do we find a way of encouraging people to relax so that we can actually use the language. And I think that's why it is equal. And I know that we are in an education committee and the focus is on education. I think that a lot of the assumption is that the focus is always on learning. But those of us who were born and bred with Gallic need to learn. We need to learn something different. Okay, we don't need to learn the mechanics of the language. We don't need to learn the sound. But we do need to actually learn that there is value in what we have. I still live in Stornoway. I know an awful lot of people who will understand absolutely every word of Gallic but will not utter a word because they are petrified that if they do they will be criticised. Because we've just developed this culture, we need to break that. We need to move on. And we do need to use the value of Gallic and it is valuable. There can't be anything more intimidating than Mari though, surely? So, I'm interested in just moving on. There was a proposal for, I think it was perhaps on sky, for a community, a housing development that would just be for the speakers of the language. Is that something you would support? Do you think that would be a positive development? I think that we need to be very careful about things like that. Very careful indeed. Attracting people to the islands, we need to be very careful about that as well, how land is acquired and so on. We need to be very, very careful around that too. It's certainly not ruling anyone out but it's bringing many more in. Thank you for that answer. I'm looking at the clocks or Ian. I'm very aware that Graham Day has a couple of questions as well. I'll shrink that to one question to the chair and cut to the chase. It follows on from the line of question that Willie had there. Mari, you mentioned ferries earlier on and you'll be aware, no doubt, that one of the many criticisms of the ferry delivery organisation is that none of the directors live in the islands that they serve and there are also criticisms that some of the staff whose roles are not geographically specific aren't based in the islands. I'm just wondering across the board how many of the people who are involved in your organisation are embedded either professionally or personally in the traditional Gaelic harlands? It's a complicated one. I can take the example of... I was a teacher. I know teachers who don't have any children but are very, very good teachers. You don't have to be doing it yourself to be able to know what to do. The fact that Scotland is really quite a small place, although it is surprising that people in the central belt know so little or experience so little and the example is the awful thing you've all been suffering with the train strike recently. That's daily life in my community. Every time, and I come away a lot, I have to download the app every single day to check. If they lived in the islands, I'm open about that but I really feel that the system is broken in terms of the ferries particularly and something needs to be done for people in the islands know what they want and many of them are the mariners and are experienced in lots of ways but they are not being listened to or they are being listened to but their view nothing is changing so we need to see change. In the context, as I've perhaps not pitched my question sufficiently queerly, the question I'm asking is about your organisation because out of the people who are involved in the board, recognising that we're talking about a national plan to deliver the language across Scotland but just for my understanding what sort of percentage of those individuals are actually embedded in the traditional communities and how many of them. I mean I see you've got officers in Stornoway, Inverness and Glasgow so what's the geographic spread of the people who work for the board? We now have four of our officers in Stornoway or in Lewis the only one actually in Stornoway is myself and I think what we've been able to do is to take advantage of the challenges that we had with Covid where everybody was working from home so all four have been recruited since then so I think there are now more opportunities for people from Gallic communities to be to work for for board in Gallic. We're no longer restricted to having an office in Inverness and an office in Glasgow and I would I would say this I suppose but I would look to encourage that I think it's better for us it's better for us if we have more people embedded but I think I think other than board in Gallic itself is only a part of what we use the funding even that comes to board in Gallic 19% of the funding comes to board in Gallic of that less than half of it is spent on board in Gallic itself through the funding that we provide there are a large I think at one point last year we were funding 59 officers in Gallic roles and I would say that half of those were in the traditional communities but working for other organisations in Gallic bodies so but again one of the challenges that we have is in terms of our collaboration and making sure that we're working well together it does help us if we have some of our officers also located in these same communities so we can establish the it's all very well having the organisational relationships but actually the personal relationships add significant value so we're we're moving in the right direction in that and I think we will have opportunities in future to extend that. An interesting collaboration is to work with community land Scotland which of course impacts very much on the traditional and we are working with them closely to have more impact on the rural communities as well. That's great thank you very much for that. Mary you gave us an advertisement for your consultation earlier on and encouraged us all to take part so may I take the opportunity to looking at the draft national plan what measures are going to be in place to determine whether there will be an increase in the use of Gallic and an increase in the learning of Gallic and what sort of levels or of increase would you constitute to be a success and to sort of sum up I've also got it and how will you you spoke also about that only 19 percent of the funding for Gallic comes to the board okay so there's obviously lots of other activities that go on so how will the board evaluate the contribution of all the activities and your individual activities in the plan to deliver your overall aims and I know that's a massive question to lay last but if we can get some sort of feedback from yourselves that would be great. It's very tempting to respond to that by saying well it's not our plan it's the government's plan and the government approved the plan but I think one of the things one of the things we have to do I think it's was mentioned in the spice briefing this in terms of outcomes and in terms of measuring outcomes very very easy to say it's been said for a long long time again my experience in the public sector we've been talking about outcomes for a long time and to be honest getting nowhere close to identifying what those outcomes are and measuring what they are one of the challenges that we have is the timescale in which we plan and the timescale in which we measure outcomes I think that the plans we have at the moment we have a lot of things in place but is five years enough to be able to judge the outcomes from the impact of the plan I would I would actually take the social attitudes survey as being one way of looking at measuring those outcomes the interesting thing there is that I think the time span between the two surveys the comparative surveys is nine years so is is there a need to look at in the legislation for our planning does our planning need to be over the longer term to be able to have or does there need to be something overarching we do have to become much more focused on what we achieve with the money that we spend we need to move the focus away from the money yes everybody wants more money and we can do more money but we at the moment I think in seeing the change in attitudes that actually gives us or should give us a bit of hope that we can maybe be a bit bolder in terms of setting those outcomes but I'll do I'll do the same thing as I've done in all the consultation events that I've been involved in and I will I will actually put that back because it is a consultation process are there things that you as a committee or as individuals believe that we should be measuring are there measures that are important to you yourselves to you as a committee to to our communities we've been asking the same thing it's not just it's not just a case of plucking things out of the air and just looking to you know to go you know we've talked it doesn't matter what we talk about or when we talk about outcomes our natural instinct is always to resort back to the things that we know and understand like the number of pupils in Gaelic medium education like the number of teachers in Gaelic medium education and availability they're not outcomes they're outputs yes in some cases they're inputs but we do have to move our conversation on so we can develop real real outcomes and we have been talking about this at the board in terms of our own developments and looking to to work with government to try and develop some of these but I think how do you judge at the end of the day we have two prime aims ones to increase the number of Gaelic people who use Gaelic and the number of people learning Gaelic we just need to find measures for the two of those and to find the right timescale over which to to show the progress because there's little point in us setting outcomes for a one-year period or a five-year period if it's going to take us six seven eight nine years to to achieve so I think we need we need to develop that conversation and there is a conversation thank you Ian and I suppose I'm very encouraged to hear that your consultation exercise is something that you're genuinely interested in listening to people's views and suggestions and I think that's I'm really really pleased to hear that so thank you very much and with that sadly the clock has chimed and we've reached the conclusion of our session today so I'd like to thank you all very much for coming along on your time today and the public part of our meeting is now at an end and we will be considering our final agenda items in private so can I ask members participating virtually to reconvene in Microsoft Teams in a few minutes thank you very much and good morning