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Parent Question: Is Home Tuition in Irish Funded?
By admin | March 31, 2010
This question is highlighted after a comment on the IDK website, so other parents can add their points if wished. Students & parents discuss the issue on the IDK forum, in one of the most-read posts.
Hi, my son is 9 years old. He has a severe hearing loss in both ears and attends mainstream school. He did quite well up to this year but at the moment he is having difficulty with Irish. The visiting teacher has suggested he drop Irish as a subject and puts the resource time into his English development. He was using some of his resource hours last year in the classroom for Irish, but the school has withdrawn this support as they feel he needs to focus on his English and maths. I am wondering if it is possible to arrange home tuition for him in Irish at this stage. He is in third class. Thanks, Marie C.
IDK’s response:
Hi Marie C,
Just to follow up on your recent enquiry.
Firstly, most deaf children at mainstream schools get an exemption from Irish by the time they move to secondary level. Unless you’ve a strong reason for his continuing Irish (eg, for primary teaching or other careers), this might be the best option. Your son could then catch up on resource work and homework while his classmates had an Irish class.
This way, he gets a chance to review current work in his stronger subjects and to motivate himself, rather than lose potential homework time in those stronger subjects, to “catching” up in Irish.
It really depends on your reason/s for him to continue with Irish as a school subject, and his own thoughts on this.
The Department of Education incidentally doesn’t fund home tuition in Irish for deaf students. This leaves two options, (1) private home tuition or (2) negotiating resource hours with the school. Of course, if your son has an aptitude for languages, one of these two options might be the best route.
I hope this helps – this thread is being followed by parents & teachers, so feel free to add to it. A discussion on this topic is also on the IDK forum if you’d like to read what other students said in response to a parent’s post.
What do other parents – and students – think?
Caroline
Topics: Irish Deaf Kids | 1 Comment »
March 14th, 2011 at 6:17 pm
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