This Advice provides important information on the national context, and describes best practice to support senior leaders, practitioners and education authorities in evaluating and planning for improvement in Gaelic Education. It is based on evidence from inspections, reviews and validated self-evaluation, covering all sectors of Gaelic Education; and other engagements with a wide range of stakeholders.

See Gaelic version.

How to use this resource

The Advice on Gaelic Education should be used with the suite of quality frameworks How good is our ..? to contextualise these to the Gaelic sector. These frameworks set out the standards we use to evaluate and report on quality and improvement in Scottish education.

Challenge questions

Here are some challenge questions to support professional dialogue and help focus self-evaluation and improvement to Gaelic:

• To what extent are senior leaders and staff critically engaging with the Advice on Gaelic Education and scrutiny findings to improve their outcomes for children and young people?
• How do we ensure that improving provision for Gaelic is central to self-evaluation activity and part of impactful strategic planning for improvement?
• What are our approaches to raising attainment and closing the poverty-related attainment gap across all areas of the curriculum?
• How do we use our understanding of the social, economic and cultural context of the school to inform and shape planning for improvement?
• In what ways do we gather and take account of a range of evidence on the quality of immersion we provide?
• What actions are we taking to ensure learning and teaching is of a consistently high quality?
• How effective is our use of digital technologies to enhance learning, deliver the curriculum and develop skills for learning, life and work?
• What does equality and equity look like for the children and young people in Gaelic Medium Education?
• The General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Professional Standards apply in English Medium Education and Gaelic Medium Education, with four bespoke references to Gaelic across standards. How will you embed their use in your setting?

Downloads

March 2022: We made minor updates to the Advice on Gaelic Education by renewing time bound references; adding detail of legislation for Gaelic to section 2 and adding more detail on assessment to Section 7.11.

October 2022: We have updated the presentation slides and professional learning resources. These are presentations used by HM Lead Inspectors in sharing inspection evidence, and supporting professional learning and improvement.

Advice on Gaelic Education March 2022 (PDF 960 KB)

You can also access the Advice on Gaelic Education publication in sections.

1. Introduction (PDF 277 KB)
2. Gaelic Education Legislation (PDF 286 KB)
3. Gaelic Education Policy (PDF 358 KB)
4. Gaelic Medium Education (GME)(PDF 385 KB)
5. GME: Engagement with parents (PDF 456 KB)
6. GME: Career-long professional learning (PDF 357 KB)
7. GME: Total immersion (PDF 527 KB)
8. GME: The immersion phase P3 onwards (PDF 282 KB)
9. GME: Secondary stages (PDF 401 KB)
10. GME: Improving fluency (PDF 373 KB)
11. GME: Transitions (PDF 174 KB)
12. GME: A 1+2 Approach to Language Learning (PDF 278 KB)
13. GME: Ethos for Gaelic (PDF 374 KB)
14. GME: Learners with additional needs (PDF 282 KB)
15. Gaelic Learner Education (GLE)(PDF 272 KB)
16. Gaelic Learner Education: Curriculum 3-18 (PDF 582 KB)
17. Learning about Gaelic language and culture (PDF 279 KB)

Presentations and professional learning resources

Advice on Gaelic Education - key messages (PDF 2 MB)

School Inspection Findings with Gaelic evaluations (PDF 1.4 MB)

Sharing HM Inspectors’ findings - Building capacity by illustrating improvements (PDF 1.7 MB)

Sharing Inspection Findings - SLF (PDF 308 KB)

Update: HM Inspectors - Gaelic inspection (PDF 805 KB)

Gaelic Local Authority Network GLAN Slides (PPT 2MB)