Ireland falling behind in languages
Created Wednesday, 9th November 2011, 10:04 by Whykay
It's not news to find out that Ireland is quite low in the table when it comes to proficiency of a second or third language. Especially if they are languages that popular at the moment. Mandarin Chinese was one of the examples from this Irish Times article.
No matter what the article has written, the Irish government's response was that they don't have the budget for courses like Mandarin Chinese. This issue was raised in the Seanad by Senator Paschal Mooney about the school curriculam.
UCD Confucius Institute for Ireland has introduced a programme for Transition years, it started in September 2011. It rolled out nationwide. It would be interesting to see how many schools are taking part in this programme.