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The attainment of pupils in Gaelic-medium primary education in ScotlandFiona O'Hanlona, Lindsay Patersonb & Wilson McLeoda
a Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, The University ofEdinburgh, Edinburgh, UKb Department of Education and Society, Moray House School ofEducation, Edinburgh, UKPublished online: 28 Aug 2012.
To cite this article: Fiona O'Hanlon, Lindsay Paterson & Wilson McLeod (2013) The attainment ofpupils in Gaelic-medium primary education in Scotland, International Journal of Bilingual Educationand Bilingualism, 16:6, 707-729, DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2012.711807
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.711807
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The attainment of pupils in Gaelic-medium primary education inScotland
Fiona O’Hanlona*, Lindsay Patersonb and Wilson McLeoda
aDepartment of Celtic and Scottish Studies, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK;bDepartment of Education and Society, Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh, UK
(Received 7 June 2012; final version received 10 July 2012)
The curricular attainment of pupils in Gaelic-medium primary education inScotland is investigated using surveys of Gaelic-medium and English-mediumpupils in the fifth and seventh years of primary school (approximately 9 and 11years of age) in 2007. The Gaelic-medium survey was essentially a census ofpupils. The English-medium survey was a clustered random sample of 25% ofpupils. Attainment was assessed in Gaelic reading and writing (for the Gaelic-medium pupils), and English reading and writing, mathematics and science (forboth Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils). Science was assessed by testsadministered as part of the survey; attainment in the other curricular areas wasassessed by teacher judgement. The measures were analysed using multi-levelmodelling, with pupils grouped in schools (and, for some purposes withmultivariate outcomes, with measures nested in pupils), and with controls forgender and social deprivation. While most Gaelic-medium pupils were perform-ing in Gaelic at the level stipulated by the curricular framework, a largerproportion was doing so in relation to English. In English reading more Gaelic-medium pupils had reached the stipulated level than had English-medium pupils.There was no reliable evidence of any difference between the two pupil groups inEnglish writing, mathematics or science.
Keywords: Gaelic-medium education; immersion education; bilingual education;attainment; multi-level modelling; school effects
1. Introduction
1.1. Purposes of the paper
This paper analyses attainment in Scottish Gaelic-medium primary-school education
by bringing together two distinct strands of educational research. One strand is
international research into the role of immersion or bilingual education in children’s
linguistic development and in their progress in other subjects of the curriculum
(Gathercole and Thomas 2009; Harris 1983; Nı Rıordain 2011; O Duibhir 2009;
Thomas and Collier 1997, 2002). The other is the statistical investigation of school
effects, an area of educational research which has seen very significant developments
of concepts, techniques and statistical software in the past two decades (Goldstein
2011; Rasbash et al. 2010; Sammons and Luyton 2009). The most notable
methodological development has been the use of multi-level statistical modelling
to understand the effects which social groups (here schools) have on individual
*Corresponding author. Email: Fiona.O’[email protected]
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 2013
Vol. 16, No. 6, 707�729, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2012.711807
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experience and to understand how different aspects of experience relate to each other
� for example, how children’s attainment in one dimension of learning relates to their
attainment in other dimensions of learning.
Scottish Gaelic-medium education has many similarities to bilingual education in
other contexts but also has some relatively unusual features. It shares goals of full
bilingualism and biliteracy in both the immersion language and the state language.
In common with other bilingual education systems, it has the same aims in other
areas of the curriculum as schools where education is conducted through the mediumof the state language. It also shares the linguistic context of other lesser used
languages, such as Welsh and Irish, where most children in bilingual education have
the majority language at home.1 The main distinctive feature of Gaelic-medium
education is that it is provided mainly in dual-stream schools: that is, schools where
Gaelic-medium education is provided alongside classes which are taught through the
medium of the state language (English).
The major aims of the paper are thus to investigate the outcomes of Gaelic-
medium education as a typical but also distinctive instance of immersion educationand to compare the attainments of Gaelic-medium pupils in Scotland with those of
their English-medium counterparts. The paper investigates these research questions
by means of the application of multi-level modelling to large-scale surveys of Gaelic-
medium and English-medium pupils. Sections 1.2�1.4 outline the contextual and
research background relevant to the paper. Section 2 details the methods employed
in the research, Section 3 presents the results and Section 4 provides a discussion of
the findings. The paper concludes with a comparison between our findings and
previous research and with methodological recommendations for future attainmentresearch.
1.2. Contextual background
Gaelic-medium education is a system of education for bilingualism and biliteracy (in
Scottish Gaelic and English) which has grown in Scotland from two primary schools
teaching 24 pupils in 1985 (MacLeod 2003, 13) to 60 primary schools teaching 2418
pupils in 2012 (Galloway 2012, Table 3). Fifty-eight of these are dual-stream primaryschools which teach both Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils. Two are
freestanding Gaelic-medium primary schools.2 McLeod (2009, 38) highlights that
such a pattern of provision is atypical of minority-language-medium education
internationally, which more usually favours freestanding immersion or bilingual
schools. Fourteen of the 32 Local Authority areas in Scotland make provision for
Gaelic-medium primary education, with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (CNES � The
Western Isles), Highland and Argyll and Bute (the ‘traditional’ Gaelic-speaking
areas) being the biggest providers: in the 2011�2012 school year, they had 35,35 and 10% of Gaelic-medium providers, respectively, together teaching 60% of
pupils (Galloway 2012, Table 3). Another 11 authorities had one Gaelic-medium
primary provider. These are mainly in large population centres such as Aberdeen,
Cumbernauld, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling.
When the attainment evidence presented in this paper was collected (2006�2007),
teaching and learning in Scottish primary schools were shaped by national guidelines
on the curriculum for ages 5�14, an age range which encompassed the seven primary-
school stages and first two secondary school stages. These guidelines covered fivecurricular areas: Mathematics, Environmental Studies, Expressive Arts, Religious
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and Moral Education and Language (Scottish Office Education Department [SOED]
1993a, 12). There was a sequence of levels of attainment for each curricular area,
each with associated tests, from Level A in lower primary to Level F in lower
secondary: Level A was to be attainable by almost all pupils in Primary 3, Level B by
some pupils in Primary 3 and by most in Primary 4, Level C by most pupils during
Primary 4 to Primary 6, Level D by most pupils by the end of Primary 7, and Level E
by most pupils in Secondary 2.
The curricular guidelines for four of these five curricular areas were identical in
Gaelic-medium and English-medium education, apart from the medium of educa-
tion:
In Gaelic-medium schools and units, the whole curriculum will be delivered through themedium of Gaelic. All the outcomes of environmental studies, the expressive arts,mathematics and religious and moral education will, therefore, be taught throughGaelic, as will all cross-curricular concerns such as social and personal development.(SOED 1993b, 7)
However, there were differences between Gaelic-medium and English-medium
education in the intended educational outcomes for language, as Gaelic-medium
education aims to foster Gaelic-language oracy and literacy in addition to the English-
language oracy and literacy developed in English-medium education. There thus
existed guidelines for English-language 5�14 for all pupils, and Gaelic-medium pupils
additionally followed the Gaidhlig 5�14 programme of study. The Gaidhlig 5�14
curricular guidelines aimed ‘to bring pupils to the stage of broadly equal competence
in Gaelic and English, in all the skills, by the end of Primary 7’ (SOED 1993b, 6).
Gaelic-medium education aims to develop such bilingualism and biliteracy in its
pupils by means of an initial Gaelic immersion phase of at least two years duration,
in which the focus is on developing pupils’ oral Gaelic competence. Literacy is
introduced in Gaelic, on the grounds that ‘skills acquired in Gaelic may be expected
to transfer readily to English’ (SOED 1993b, 6). The guidelines recommended that
pupils’ Gaelic-language skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing reach Level
A before English was introduced, which typically means that English is introduced in
Primary 3 or 4. Thereafter, the only advice given on language models in Gaelic-
medium primary education was that Gaelic be the ‘predominant’ teaching medium
throughout the primary-school stages (SOED 1993b, 6). Individual local authorities,
schools or teachers are thus afforded flexibility in the implementation of Gaelic�English-language models in accordance with their pupils’ linguistic needs.3
Gaelic-medium education is immersion education in a second language for the
majority of pupils, and heritage-language education in a first language for a minority
of pupils. National data on the first language of pupils in Gaelic-medium education
is not available, but in the annual school census for the 2011�2012 school year
Gaelic is reported to be the ‘main home language’ of 637 pupils (0.1% of pupils in
Scotland) in publicly funded primary or secondary schools, a judgement based on
parents’ assessment of pupils’ language use (Scottish Government 2011, Chart 1 and
Table 1.14). As there were 3522 pupils enrolled in either Gaelic-medium primary
education or Gaidhlig (fluent speakers) classes in the 2011�2012 school year
(Galloway 2012, Tables 3 and 4), Gaelic was the ‘main home language’ of, at most,
18% of the pupils enrolled in Gaelic-medium primary or Gaidhlig fluent speaker
education in 2010�2011.4
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 709
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The present research uses surveys of pupil attainment in the 5�14 assessment
framework (from the 2006�2007 school year) to investigate two research questions:
Research Question 1
What are the patterns of Gaelic-medium pupils’ linguistic achievements at the
primary-school stage? By this we mean pupils’ Gaelic and English attainment as
compared with curricular expectations, and pupils’ comparative attainment in Gaelic
and in English.
Research Question 2
What are the comparative patterns of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils’
curricular achievements at the primary-school stage in English, Mathematics and
Science?5
Such questions are intrinsically important from a pedagogical perspective for those
interested in bilingual development and bilingual education. They are additionally ofinterest from a language-planning perspective in Scotland, where Gaelic-medium
education is employed as a key aspect of acquisition planning for Gaelic (Bord na
Gaidhlig 2007, 12; Bord na Gaidhlig 2012, 22), a language with fewer than 60,000
speakers according to the 2001 census (SCROL 2001).
1.3. Previous research: Scotland
The immediate reference point for the present research is the study of attainment inGaelic-medium primary education by Johnstone et al. (1999), based on data
collected in the mid-1990s. The attainment data were mainly based on teacher
judgements but a separate mechanism � the government-funded Assessment of
Achievement Programme � was used to assess pupil performance in science,
mathematics and English. In relation to Gaelic-medium pupils’ linguistic abilities
(our Research Question 1), Johnstone et al. (1999) found that Gaelic-medium pupils
had typically not achieved Level C in Gaelic literacy by Primary 5, with 21% doing
so in relation to reading and 19% in relation to writing in the 1997�1998 school year(n�162) (27). However, the majority of Primary 7 pupils had achieved the required
attainment level (Level D) for Gaelic, with 59% doing so in relation to reading and
61% in relation to writing in the 1997�1998 school year (n�98) (Johnstone et al.
1999, 27). Johnstone et al. (1999, 29) also found that Gaelic-medium pupils had, on
average, higher attainment in English than in Gaelic in reading in Primary 5 (with
21% of pupils passing Level C in Gaelic, compared to 36% in English) and in both
reading and writing in Primary 7 (with 59% of pupils passing Level D in Gaelic
reading compared with 80% doing so in English). The analogous figures for writingwere 61 and 75%.6 In relation to the comparative attainment of Gaelic-medium and
English-medium pupils (our Research Question 2), Johnstone et al. found Primary 5
Gaelic-medium pupils to have similar attainment to English-medium pupils in the
same schools on all four English-language skills (reading, writing, listening and
talking), and to be slightly below the levels of English-medium pupils nationally. In
Primary 7, Gaelic-medium pupils were ahead of English-medium pupils in the same
schools on these four English-language skills, and had similar attainment to English-
medium pupils nationally (Johnstone et al. 1999, 32, 34). In science in Primary 4 andPrimary 7 (the school stages investigated by the Assessment of Achievement
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Programme), Gaelic-medium pupils performed less well than the English-medium
pupils at the same school, but their results matched the national average in Primary 4
and were close to doing so in Primary 7. In mathematics in Primary 4 and Primary 7,
Gaelic-medium pupils performed better than both the English-medium pupils at the
same school and the national average (Johnstone et al. 1999, 39�40).However, such patterns of Gaelic-medium pupil attainment were from a time
when the Gaelic-medium education sector was smaller than it has become. There
were 1736 pupils in 55 schools in the 1997�1998 school year (MacLeod 2003, 13),
and between then and 2006�2007 the number of pupils had increased by 25% but the
number of Gaelic-medium providers by 11%, with the consequence that the average
class size in Gaelic-medium education increased. Because there may be a link
between class size and attainment (Blatchord et al. 2003), we investigate here whether
such changing circumstances had an impact on the patterns of attainment of Gaelic-
medium pupils. We do not have data to allow us to investigate the effect of class size
directly, but by allowing for school clustering in the multi-level analysis (described in
Section 2.2 below) we are implicitly allowing for any effects of class size, since most
of the variation in class size will be variation between small and large schools.
There have also been reports on attainment in Gaelic-medium education by the
Scottish Government (Scottish Executive 2002), the schools’ inspectorate (Her
Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education [HMIE] 2005), and Highland Council (2009).
However, these reports compared Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils
without allowing for confounding factors (such as gender and socio-economic
status) that are associated with attainment and whose distribution is known to be
different in the Gaelic-medium and English-medium education sectors.
1.4. Previous research: the UK and Ireland
International research on pupil attainment in immersion and bilingual education
also forms part of the context of the present paper. ‘Home international’ (Raffe et al.
1999) comparisons with other Celtic languages in the UK, and also in the Republic
of Ireland, are particularly useful because of the similarity of social and economic
contexts. Raffe et al. (1999) argue that this provides a valid basis for comparison of
education systems. The comparison of Celtic-medium education across these
national contexts is arguably as valid as the general comparison of education
systems which Raffe et al. outline because the aims of Celtic-medium education are
similar across the Scottish, Welsh and Irish contexts. The Celtic-language pro-
grammes in Wales and Ireland are, as in Scotland, each ‘strong’ forms of bilingual
education (Baker 2011, 232), which have bilingualism, biliteracy and biculturalism as
intended outcomes. They are ‘additive’ bilingualism models, which ‘enable . . . chil-
children to acquire a good command of two languages . . . with a second language
giving added value to the first’ (Johnstone 1994, 44). Research on the educational
attainments of pupils who have attended such immersion or bilingual Celtic-
language programmes in these contexts has typically found a higher performance
amongst Celtic-medium pupils than English-medium pupils, particularly in English
(Johnstone et al. 1999; Muller 2005; O hAinifein 2007; Sharp et al. 1973). However,
as with any research on the effects of schools on pupil attainment, it is important to
allow for confounding social factors before we may validly attribute these perceived
advantages in attainment to immersion and heritage-language education.7
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 711
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Nevertheless, the literature on children’s developing bilingualism offers reasons to
expect to find such differences in attainment between children educated monolin-
gually and bilingually. Baker (2011, 161) notes that bilingual people tend to have
‘advantages on certain thinking dimensions, particularly in divergent thinking,
creativity, early metalinguistic awareness and communicative sensitivity’. The
unifying concept here is children’s developing a ‘theory of mind’, which may be
facilitated by the practice of making linguistic choices from two or more languages
(Bialystok and Senman 2004; Emmorey et al. 2008; Goetz 2003; Perner andAichhorn 2008). We do not have the data here to test such theories directly, but they
do offer a potential explanation of any attainment differences found.
2. Data and methods
2.1. Data
Evidence for the analysis comes from two linked sources � the 2007 Scottish Survey
of Achievement (SSA) and the 2007 Survey of Gaelic Education (ScottishGovernment 2008, 2009).
2.1.1. Scottish survey of achievement
Information about English-medium pupils comes from the 2007 SSA (Scottish
Government 2008). The Survey was the main means by which the Scottish
Government monitored attainment in primary and early secondary English-medium
education between 2005 and 2009.8 The English-medium pupils in the 2006�2007
sample were selected by a two-stage clustered random sample, with schools asclusters. The selection of schools was stratified by size and Local Authority, whilst
pupils from Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7 and Secondary 2 were selected by
simple random sampling within schools. This paper uses data from Primary 5 and
Primary 7, the school stages that were included in the parallel Survey of Gaelic
Education (described in Section 2.1.2 below). The target English-medium sample size
was 12,703 pupils at Primary 5 and 12,718 at Primary 7, from 895 Local Authority
and independent schools. This is approximately one in four of all pupils in these
primary stages. The pupil response rate was 80% at Primary 5 and 81% at Primary 7(Scottish Government 2008, 135). In our analysis, after pupils with missing data on
questions in which we are interested were excluded, the English-medium pupil
sample size dropped to 7631 in Primary 5 and 7829 in Primary 7.
In science (the main curricular topic of the 2007 SSA),9 the attainment of each
pupil was assessed by means of a pair of summative test booklets randomly selected
from six such pairs that covered the relevant 5�14 attainment levels (B�D at Primary
5 and C�E at Primary 7). In science, mathematics and English reading and writing,
teachers were also asked to judge the level which each pupil had achieved; thesejudgements would have been based on teachers’ formative use of the summative tests
that were part of the 5�14 curriculum (Munro and Johnson 2008). Thus, for science
we have both the SSA test results based on summative testing and the teacher
judgements based on formative testing.
2.1.2. Survey of Gaelic education
Information about Gaelic-medium pupils comes from the Survey of GaelicEducation (Scottish Government 2009). This survey was conducted alongside the
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2007 SSA, using broadly the same research design, including the concentration on
science. However, there were several differences between the two surveys. The Survey
of Gaelic Education incorporated only the Primary 5 and Primary 7 school stages
(rather than the Primary 3, Primary 5, Primary 7 and Secondary 2 stages
incorporated in the SSA). The tests employed in the Gaelic Survey for each school
stage consisted of the same pair of test booklets for every pupil in a given stage,
rather than one pair being randomly selected (separately for each pupil) from six
pairs for each stage as in the SSA. To obtain pupil numbers from Gaelic medium thatwould be adequate for statistical analysis, all 44 schools which taught science wholly
or partly through the medium of Gaelic to Primary 5 and Primary 7 pupils in 2006�2007 were invited to participate in the Survey of Gaelic Education.10 Of these 44
schools, 35 participated for Primary 5 and 30 for Primary 7. This yielded potential
samples of 226 Primary 5 and 179 Primary 7 pupils, 192 (85%) and 179 (93%) of
whom participated. To prevent the identification of schools by class size, 12 pupils
were deleted at random by the government statisticians before we were given the data
from the Gaelic survey. After further deletion of cases that had missing data on thevariables in which we were interested, the sample sizes for the Gaelic-medium pupils
were 168 in Primary 5 and 140 in Primary 7.
In the Survey of Gaelic Education, as in the SSA, teachers provided assessments
of pupil attainment in science, mathematics and English reading and writing. Gaelic-
medium teachers additionally provided judgements on pupils’ Gaelic reading and
writing abilities. Teachers’ grades tend to be more optimistic about attainment than
the results shown by objective tests in the SSA (Munro and Johnson 2008), but these
discrepancies were similar in the Survey of Gaelic Education and the SSA (ScottishGovernment 2009, 7�8), and so should not invalidate the comparison of Gaelic-
medium and English-medium attainment using teacher judgements.
2.2. Methods of analysis
2.2.1. Outcome variables
We define a dichotomous outcome variable (pass/fail) for science for each 5�14 level.This variable records whether the respondent had answered at least 65% of test items
for that level correctly. The 65% threshold was interpreted in the official reports of
the SSA (e.g. Scottish Government 2008) as indicating that the pupil was ‘well
established’ at the corresponding 5�14 level. Where the attainment information
comes from teacher judgements, a pupil is said to have passed at a particular level if
the teacher judged that they have achieved that level.
2.2.2. Comparability of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupil groups
Research Question 1 relates to the comparative performance of Gaelic-medium
pupils in Gaelic and English, and so problems of validity of comparisons between
Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupil groups do not arise. However, for
Research Question 2, the main focus of the analysis is on the comparison between
Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils. The widest comparison is with the
group of 7631 Primary 5 pupils and 7829 Primary 7 English-medium pupils. This
group has the advantage of giving reliable estimates because it is a very large sample;it has the disadvantage that it does not take account of any confounding differences
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 713
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in the social characteristics of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils.11 We deal
with this in two ways. One is by regression modelling for such differences, controlling
for gender and level of deprivation. The second is to use, instead, a sub-sample of
English-medium pupils from the SSA which government statisticians had matched to
the Gaelic pupils with respect to gender, levels of social deprivation, and Local
Authority of their school, and who had taken the same two test booklets as were used
in the Gaelic Survey.12 There were 164 Primary 5 pupils and 149 Primary 7 pupils in
the matched English-medium pupil sub-sample. For brevity we refer to theundifferentiated sample of English-medium pupils from the SSA as the ‘all of
English medium’ group and we refer to the sub-sample of English-medium pupils as
the ‘matched English-medium’ group.
2.2.3. Methods of statistical modelling
The main analysis is by multi-level modelling (Goldstein 2011), as it provides valid
estimates of standard errors and allows variation between schools to be studied.
Baker (1990) recommends this approach for research into pupil attainment in
bilingual and immersion education. A summary algebraic explanation is given in
Appendix 1, which also explains that, where we are simultaneously modelling more
than one attainment measure for each individual pupil � as for the comparison of
Gaelic- and English-language abilities of Gaelic-medium pupils in Research
Question 1 and as for those aspects of Research Question 2 that compare school-level variances between different dimensions of attainment � a convenient way of
representing the data structure is as a model with three levels, namely schools, pupils,
and measures within pupils. The modelling was carried out using the software
MLwiN (Rasbash et al. 2009). For Research Question 2, the results of the models are
presented in Tables in terms of the estimated difference in attainment between
Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils, controlling for pupil gender and level of
social deprivation. Allowance is also made for Local Authority area. Local Authority
area was grouped into four categories to preserve the anonymity of schools that arethe sole provider of Gaelic-medium education in their area. The four categories are:
(1) Highland (13 Gaelic-medium streams in the sample, 117 Gaelic-medium pupils),
(2) CNES (the Western Isles) (10 and 52), (3) Argyll and Bute (2 and 11) and (4) the
Local Authorities where there is a single provider (in the sample, 8 Gaelic-medium
providers and 128 Gaelic-medium pupils).
3. Results
3.1. Research Question 1: Gaelic-medium pupils’ linguistic attainment
3.1.1. Descriptive statistics
We ask first whether Gaelic-medium pupils are reaching the levels of attainment in
Gaelic stipulated in the curricular guidelines. Table 1 (Primary 5) and Table 2
(Primary 7) show that a majority are doing so in reading, as judged by teachers. In
Primary 5, 70% of pupils reach the required level C in Gaelic reading (Table 1, top
half); with a sample size of 168, this has a 95% confidence interval of approximately
93.2%. In Primary 7 (Table 2), the proportion reaching level D is 83% for Gaelic
reading (with 95% confidence interval of 93.5%). For Gaelic writing, the attainment
is not so strong, although it is better at Primary 7 than at Primary 5: 51% hadreached level C at Primary 5, and 64% had reached level D at Primary 7.
714 F. O’Hanlon et al.
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At Primary 5, Gaelic-medium pupils’ performance in English is similar to that in
Gaelic: the proportions reaching level C were 70% in Gaelic reading compared to
77% in English reading, and 51% in Gaelic writing compared to 54% in English
writing. In Primary 7, however, Gaelic attainment had fallen behind English
attainment somewhat: the proportions reaching level D were 83% in Gaelic reading
compared to 93% in English reading, and 64% in Gaelic writing compared to 74% in
English writing. However, for the reasons explained in Appendix 1, such aggregate
data cannot give us valid estimates of standard errors for comparing the Gaelic- and
English-language attainment of Gaelic-medium pupils: this comparison is tested
formally in Section 3.1.2 using individual pupil-level data.
3.1.2. Statistical modelling: Gaelic-medium pupils’ attainment in Gaelic and in English
The Gaelic literacy and English literacy of Gaelic-medium pupils are compared using
formal statistical modelling in Table 3. The advantages over the descriptive statistics
of Tables 1 and 2 are that valid standard errors are calculated, and that an estimate is
available of correlation at the school level as well as the pupil level. The main point is
that, in Primary 7, more Gaelic-medium pupils have passed the level D test in
English than in Gaelic: the gap on the logistic scale is 1.12 in reading and 0.60 in
writing.13 These are both greater than the gaps in Primary 5 (0.56 for reading and
0.03 for writing). Indeed, there is no evidence of a gap in Gaelic-medium pupils’
Gaelic and English writing in Primary 5. A concomitant of the larger gaps in reading
than in writing is that the correlation at pupil level of performance between the two
Table 2. Teachers’ judgements of Gaelic-medium pupil attainment in Primary 7.
Attainment level (percentage in rows)
B or lower C D E or higher
GaelicReading 5 12 63 20Writing 9 27 54 10
EnglishReading 3 4 45 48Writing 3 23 58 16
Note: Sample size 140.Sources are Scottish Survey of Achievement, 2007, and Survey of Gaelic Education, 2007.
Table 1. Teachers’ judgements of Gaelic-medium pupil attainment in Primary 5.
Attainment level (percentage in rows)
A or lower B C D or higher
GaelicReading 2 28 57 13Writing 5 44 46 5
EnglishReading 1 21 71 6Writing 4 42 50 4
Note: Sample size 168.Sources are Scottish Survey of Achievement, 2007, and Survey of Gaelic Education, 2007.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 715
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languages is lesser in reading than in writing (0.63 compared to 0.90 at Primary 5;
0.64 compared to 0.83 at Primary 7). At the school level, wherever there is a gap
between Gaelic and English attainment (i.e. apart from writing in Primary 5), there
may be more variation at school level in Gaelic than in English attainment, though
the standard errors of these variances are too large to allow us to be sure: the school-
level variances are 0.92 for Gaelic reading and 0.73 for English reading in Primary 5,
1.70 for Gaelic reading and 0.61 for English reading at Primary 7 and 1.39 for Gaelic
writing and 1.16 for English writing at Primary 7. In Primary 7, moreover, theschool-level correlation of Gaelic and English attainment is much lower in reading
than in writing (0.57 compared to 0.74). We comment further on these various
aspects of school-level variation in the Section 4.
3.2. Research Question 2: Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupil attainment
3.2.1. Descriptive statistics
Tables 4 and 5 present a descriptive comparison of Gaelic-medium and English-
medium pupils’ attainment, as judged by teachers, in English reading, English
writing, mathematics and science, curricular areas which the two pupil groups share.
The results for Gaelic-medium pupils’ attainment in English in Tables 4 and 5 are the
same as those in Tables 1 and 2, copied here for convenience of reference. For
English-medium pupils, Tables 4 and 5 show the results for the all-of-English-
medium sample and also for the sub-sample of English-medium pupils that waschosen to match the Gaelic-medium sample (as explained in Section 2.2.2). The
Table 3. Comparison of the attainment in Gaelic literacy and in English literacy of Primary 5and Primary 7 Gaelic-medium pupils.
Reading Writing
Primary 5 (level C)Gaelic 0.63 (SE �0.27) �0.051 (SE �0.28)English 1.19 (SE �0.27) �0.021 (SE �0.32)Chi-squared test of difference between Gaelic andEnglish attainment (1 df)
5.2 (p�0.02) 0.02 (p�0.9)
School-level varianceGaelic 0.92 (SE �0.50) 1.12 (SE �0.54)English 0.73 (SE �0.49) 1.78 (SE �0.73)
Correlation of Gaelic and English attainmentPupil level 0.63 0.90School level 0.54 0.53
Primary 7 (level D)Gaelic 1.53 (SE �0.40) 0.36 (SE �0.34)English 2.65 (SE �0.42) 0.96 (SE �0.33)Chi-squared test of difference between Gaelic andEnglish attainment (1 df)
8.4 (p�0.004) 7.3 (p�0.007)
School-level varianceGaelic 1.70 (SE �0.96) 1.39 (SE �0.71)English 0.61 (SE �0.97) 1.16 (SE �0.68)
Correlation of Gaelic and English attainmentPupil level 0.64 0.83School level 0.57 0.74
Note: Sources are Scottish Survey of Achievement, 2007, and Survey of Gaelic Education, 2007. Theestimates are logistic regression intercepts from the model explained in Appendix 1; SE, standard error.
716 F. O’Hanlon et al.
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formal modelling of the comparison between the Gaelic-medium and English-
medium pupils (with tests of statistical significance) is shown in Tables 6 and 7 below.
However, in purely descriptive terms the main feature to note from Tables 4 and 5 is
that there is generally quite close similarity between the linguistic streams in relation
to attainment in subjects common to them.
Table 4 shows the results for Primary 5. In English reading, a higher proportion
of Gaelic-medium pupils than of English-medium pupils have reached the stipulated
level C � 77% for Gaelic medium, compared to 62% for the matched English-medium
pupils and 66% for the all-of-English-medium group. There is much less of a
difference for English writing (respectively 54, 53 and 52%). In mathematics, there is
no consistent difference between Gaelic medium (60% reaching level C) and English
medium (52% for the matched group and 59% for the all-of-English-medium group).
In science, there might be some evidence of a Gaelic-medium advantage (66%
compared to 52% for the matched group and 58% for all of English medium).
Table 5 shows that, for Primary 7, the Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupil
groups’ attainments are similar, except in English reading. In mathematics, the
proportions of pupils reaching the required Level D are 82% for Gaelic-medium
pupils, 79% for the matched English-medium group and 77% for the all-of-English-
medium group. In science � unlike at Primary 5 � there is not any evidence of a
Gaelic-medium advantage: the percentages are 69 for Gaelic medium, 77 for the
matched group and 72 for the all-of-English-medium group. The percentages of
English writing are 74, 71 and 67, respectively. However, in English reading, the
proportions reaching the required level D show a difference between the pupil
groups: the pass rate is 93% for Gaelic-medium pupils, 83% for the matched English-
medium group and 80% for the all-of-English-medium group.
Table 4. Teachers’ judgements of pupil attainment, classified by whether or not in Gaelic-medium education: Primary 5.
Attainment level (percentage in rows)
A or lower B C D or higher
English readingGaelic medium 1 21 71 6Matched English medium 4 34 52 10All of English medium 5 29 56 10
English writingGaelic medium 4 42 50 4Matched English medium 9 38 48 5All of English medium 8 41 47 5
MathematicsGaelic medium 2 38 53 7Matched English medium 3 45 50 2All of English medium 4 38 55 4
ScienceGaelic medium 2 32 62 4Matched English medium 5 43 51 1All of English medium 4 39 56 2
Note: Sample sizes: Gaelic medium: 168; matched English medium: 164; all of English medium: 7631.Sources are Scottish Survey of Achievement, 2007, and Survey of Gaelic Education, 2007.
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3.2.2. Statistical modelling: comparison of attainment of Gaelic-medium and English-
medium pupils
The models in Tables 6 and 7 compare attainment in Gaelic medium with that in the
all-of-English-medium group and also in the matched sample of English-medium
pupils. Looking first at the fixed parts of the models (in the top half of the tables), it
can be seen that there is mostly no difference between the pupil groups in Primary 5,
but that there is clear evidence of a Gaelic-medium advantage in English reading. For
English reading the difference between the Gaelic-medium pupils and the all-of-
English-medium pupil group is 0.49 (with a p-value of 0.05); for the comparison of
Gaelic-medium and the matched English-medium pupil group the difference is 0.68
(p�0.015). The apparent Gaelic-medium pupil advantage in science as compared
with the all-of-English-medium group (0.73, p�0.004) is not found in the matched
sample (0.33, p�0.33), and should thus be treated with caution. For Primary 7
(Table 7), there is again clear evidence of higher attainment in English reading in the
Gaelic-medium pupil group than in the English-medium group (Gaelic medium
compared with the all-of-English-medium group: 1.06, p�0.003; Gaelic medium
compared with the matched English-medium group: 1.04, p�0.013). None of the
other differences in the fixed parts of the models in Table 7 are close to being
statistically significant.
In short, neither at Primary 5 nor at Primary 7 is there evidence that Gaelic-
medium pupils had lower proportions reaching the required levels in these subjects
than English-medium pupils, and there is fairly consistent evidence that in English
reading the proportion of Gaelic-medium pupils reaching the required levels is
higher than the proportion of English-medium pupils who do so.
In the Random parts of the models for Primary 5 (lower half of Table 6), there is
evidence of more variation at the school level in mathematics attainment, and in
Table 5. Teachers’ judgements of pupil attainment, classified by whether or not in Gaelic-medium education: Primary 7.
Attainment level (percentage in rows)
B or lower C D E or higher
English readingGaelic medium 3 4 45 48Matched English medium 1 16 45 38All of English medium 5 15 45 35
English writingGaelic medium 3 23 58 16Matched English medium 4 25 53 18All of English medium 8 26 50 17
MathematicsGaelic medium 2 16 56 26Matched English medium 3 18 58 21All of English medium 4 19 58 19
ScienceGaelic medium 1 31 69 0Matched English medium 2 22 71 6All of English medium 5 24 65 7
Note: Sample sizes: Gaelic medium: 140; matched English medium: 149; all of English medium: 7829.Sources are Scottish Survey of Achievement, 2007, and Survey of Gaelic Education, 2007.
718 F. O’Hanlon et al.
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Table 6. Comparison of the attainment of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils in Primary 5: summary results of statistical models of theprobability of passing level C.
All-of-English-medium Matched English medium
Fixed part of modelLogistic regression coefficient
(positive means Gaelic-mediumhigher)
Standard error Logistic regression coefficient(positive means Gaelic-medium
higher)
Standard error
Science test 0.73 0.25 (p�0.004) 0.33 0.34 (p�0.33)Teacher judgement of science �0.21 0.27 (p�0.44) 0.23 0.34 (p�0.50)Teacher judgement of mathematics �0.004 0.25 (p�0.99) 0.33 0.33 (p�0.32)Teacher judgement of English
reading0.49 0.25 (p�0.05) 0.68 0.28 (p�0.015)
Teacher judgement of Englishwriting
�0.12 0.24 (p�0.62) �0.068 0.30 (p�0.82)
Random part of model: school-level variance (standard error in brackets)Null model Adjusted model Null model Adjusted model
Science test 0.55 (0.08) 0.48 (0.08) 0.42 (0.37) 0.36 (0.35)Teacher judgement of science 1.54 (0.11) 1.53 (0.10) 1.29 (0.39) 1.26 (0.39)Teacher judgement of mathematics 1.11 (0.08) 1.09 (0.08) 1.14 (0.37) 1.13 (0.38)Teacher judgement of English
reading0.64 (0.06) 0.62 (0.06) 0.42 (0.27) 0.29 (0.26)
Teacher judgement of Englishwriting
0.86 (0.07) 0.87 (0.07) 0.75 (0.30) 0.79 (0.31)
Note: Sources are Scottish Survey of Achievement, 2007, and Survey of Gaelic Education, 2007. The logistic regression coefficient records the difference between theattainment of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils in a multi-level logistic regression that has the intercept varying at pupil and school level, and that controls for pupilgender and pupil deprivation: see Appendix 1. In the random part of the table, ‘adjusted model’ corresponds to the fixed-part effects shown in the top half of the table, and‘null model’ corresponds to a model with only an intercept term.
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Table 7. Comparison of the attainment of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils in Primary 7: summary results of statistical models of theprobability of passing level D.
All-of-English-medium Matched English medium
Logistic regression coefficient(positive means Gaelic-medium higher)
Standard error Logistic regression coefficient(positive means Gaelic-medium higher)
Standard error
Science test 0.55 0.36 (p�0.13) 0.73 0.54 (p�0.18)Teacher judgement of science �0.12 0.29 (p�0.68) �0.35 0.35 (p�0.32)Teacher judgement of mathematics 0.33 0.29 (p�0.26) 0.30 0.37 (p�0.42)Teacher judgement of English reading 1.06 0.36 (p�0.003) 1.04 0.42 (p�0.013)Teacher judgement of English writing 0.29 0.25 (p�0.26) 0.21 0.34 (p�0.54)
Random part of model: school-level variance (standard error in brackets)Null model Adjusted model Null model Adjusted model
Science test 0.79 (0.14) 0.68 (0.13) 1.46 (1.03) 0.90 (0.81)Teacher judgement of science 1.22 (0.09) 1.18 (0.09) 1.09 (0.45) 0.90 (0.42)Teacher judgement of mathematics 0.71 (0.07) 0.66 (0.06) 0.80 (0.44) 0.73 (0.44)Teacher judgement of English reading 0.53 (0.06) 0.45 (0.06) 0.30 (0.43) 0.25 (0.51)Teacher judgement of English writing 0.53 (0.05) 0.50 (0.05) 0.65 (0.35) 0.65 (0.37)
Note: Sources are Scottish Survey of Achievement, 2007, and Survey of Gaelic Education, 2007. The logistic regression coefficient records the difference between theattainment of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils in a multi-level logistic regression that has the intercept varying at pupil and school level, and that controls for pupilgender and pupil deprivation: see Appendix 1. In the random part of the table, ‘adjusted model’ corresponds to the fixed-part effects shown in the top half of the table, and‘null model’ corresponds to a model with only an intercept term.
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science attainment (as judged by teachers), than in English attainment. That is, in the
models of the Gaelic-medium pupil comparison with the all-of-English-medium
group, the school-level variances in the adjusted model for the teacher judgements of
science and of mathematics are respectively 1.53 and 1.09, greater than the school-
level variances for English reading and English writing (0.62 and 0.87). That these
differences are reliably established may be seen informally by noting the standard
errors of the variances, and more formally by using the chi-squared tests explained in
Appendix 1, which give p-values of lower than 0.02 in each comparison. At Primary
5, however, the school-level variance for the results of the science test is not greater
than the school-level variance in English attainment, unlike with the teacher
judgement of science. For Primary 7 (lower half of Table 7), the school-level
variances in the adjusted model for the two measures of English attainment are lower
than the school-level variances for the other subjects. This is true both of the
comparison with the all-of-English-medium group and of the comparison with the
matched group (all the p-values being less than 0.02 according to the chi-squared
tests described in Appendix 1). These results will be further discussed in Section 4.
Elaborations of the models showed that there were no interactive effects of
medium of education with gender, level of social deprivation, or the Local Authority
in which the school was located: the relative performance of the Gaelic-medium and
English-medium streams was in these respects uniform. There was also no reliable
evidence that the difference in Gaelic-medium pupils’ Gaelic attainment varied
between schools. We may thus infer that the relative performance of Gaelic-medium
pupils was not affected by the density of Gaelic speakers in the local community of
the school (even though we do not have any measure of that density in the data-set
itself). Similarly, there was no reliable evidence that the difference between Gaelic-
medium and English-medium attainment varied between schools in relation to any
subject here considered.
3.2.3. Statistical modelling: comparison of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils
in language of education
The final analysis compared the attainments of Gaelic-medium and English-medium
pupils in their language of education. This was investigated by modifying the models
shown in Tables 6 and 7 to specify as the dependent variable a hybrid, defined to be
the outcome in Gaelic reading for Gaelic-medium pupils and in English reading for
English-medium pupils, and similarly for writing. None of the four resulting
statistical tests (pertaining to reading and writing at the Primary 5 and Primary 7
school stages) showed any reliable evidence of a difference between the Gaelic-
medium and English-medium streams, whether in the all-of-English-medium pupil
group or in the matched English-medium pupil group.
The attainment of Gaelic-medium pupils in Gaelic (whether reading or writing) is
thus similar to the corresponding attainment of English-medium pupils in English.
This is relevant to both Research Questions: it is comparative (as in Research
question 2), but also is relevant to Research Question 1 because it suggests that the
Gaelic performance of Gaelic-medium pupils, despite the difference in their Gaelic
and English attainment (noted in Sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 above), is still at a level
that is comparable with English-medium pupils in their language of education at
both the Primary 5 and Primary 7 school stages.
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4. Discussion
4.1. Strengths and limitations of the analysis
Before we draw any conclusions, we note the strengths and the limitations of theanalysis. The strength of the evidence is that it comes from surveys that provide
analogous data for Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils, and thus enables the
two pupil groups to be compared. We have measures of attainment in several
curricular areas, including two aspects of attainment (reading and writing) in Gaelic
and in English. We have used multi-level modelling to make proper allowance for
sampling error and to analyse variation between schools.
There are limitations in the evidence which pertain to both Gaelic-medium and
English-medium pupils. The first is that the SSA is cross-sectional rather thanlongitudinal, and so cannot properly measure progression in learning. Second, the
measures of attainment were not uniformly valid across all curricular areas, because
formal testing was used only in the main topic of the 2007 surveys, science; the other
measures of attainment were dependent on teachers’ judgements. Third, although the
measure of social deprivation provides some broad control for the educational
resources which pupils acquire from their families, a serious deficiency was that the
variable was dichotomous, recording only whether the pupil lived in the 20% most
deprived areas of Scotland [as defined by the 2001 census (Social DisadvantageResearch Centre 2003)].
There were additional limitations of the evidence specific to the Gaelic-medium
pupil data. First, even though the SSA Gaelic Survey covered all Gaelic-medium
pupils in Primary 5 and Primary 7, its total sample size (under 300 pupils) was quite
small. Only repeated surveys over several years could overcome this limitation
entailed by the small size of the sector. Second, the data-sets had no information on
pupils’ attainment on entering English-medium or Gaelic-medium education, and so
we cannot make any strong statements as to whether being in Gaelic medium has acausal effect on pupils’ attainment. Third, we did not have any information on
whether the Gaelic-medium pupils learnt Gaelic outside school, for example, in the
home or in the community, and so we cannot assess the distinct contribution which
the schools might have made to Gaelic-medium pupils’ Gaelic-language attainment.
Large-scale quantitative studies of language background and Celtic-language
attainment in Wales (Baker 1995; Gathercole and Thomas 2009; Sharp et al. 1973)
have found having the Celtic language at home to be an advantage in relation to
grammatical accuracy, vocabulary and knowledge of idiom in Welsh. Smaller scalestudies in Scotland (MacNeil and Galloway 2004; Muller 2005) indicate this also to
be the case in relation to Scottish Gaelic.
4.2. Discussion of findings
4.2.1. Research Question 1: Gaelic-medium pupils’ linguistic achievements
At both Primary 5 and Primary 7, a clear majority of the Gaelic-medium pupils
attained the levels of Gaelic-language competence in reading that was required of
them by the official curricular guidelines. In Gaelic writing that was also true of a
clear majority at Primary 7, but at Primary 5 only one half of pupils were attaining
the stipulated level. At both Primary 5 and Primary 7, a greater proportion of
Gaelic-medium pupils reached the specified levels in English reading and writingthan in Gaelic reading and writing. However, the strength of Gaelic-medium pupils’
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abilities in Gaelic is shown in the finding that Gaelic-medium pupils’ literacy abilities
in Gaelic are similar to English-medium pupils’ literacy abilities in English.
4.2.2. Research Question 2: Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils’ attainment
There is no evidence in any curricular area or at either school stage here studied that
a lower proportion of Gaelic-medium pupils than of English-medium pupils had
reached the required attainment level. The attainment of the Gaelic-medium pupil
group was similar in English writing, science and mathematics to that of their
English-medium counterparts. The Gaelic-medium group had a higher proportion of
pupils reaching the required level in English reading than did the English-medium
group, and the Gaelic-medium pupils additionally developed competence in Gaelic,whether by newly acquiring Gaelic, or, in the case of children who also speak Gaelic
at home, consolidating and developing their Gaelic. Gaelic-medium pupils thus have
broader attainment than their English-medium counterparts and additionally have
an advantage in English reading.
The explanation of this Gaelic-medium pupil advantage in English may not
reside wholly in the school, however. The generally lower levels of between-school
variation in English attainment than in other curricular areas may reflect the fact
that English-language skills are more uniformly taught in pupils’ lives outside school(e.g. from parents reading to their children in English) than are rarer skills such as
those of mathematics or science; this is a finding of research in many countries (e.g.
Ho and Willms 1996; Jerrim and Micklewright 2009; Ma and Klinger 2000;
Neuenschwander et al. 2007; Willms and Somers 2001). The same is also true here in
comparison of school-level variation in Gaelic and in English, the former being
higher perhaps because the schools are usually the main source of Gaelic learning
just as they are for mathematics or science.
Thus our finding that English reading is better in Gaelic-medium than in English-medium streams is probably variously due to the wider linguistic environment, to
what happens in the classroom, and to advantages associated with bilingualism (see
Section 1.4). Our results would be consistent with a suggestion by Johnstone (2010,
15) regarding the bilingual development of children in Gaelic-medium education:
‘many parents undoubtedly supported their children’s literacy in English informally
through the home, and so the children’s biliteracy was initially developed in two
separate settings’. If bilingualism is benefiting the children cognitively, then it seems
to be happening as a result of a joint effect of home and school.
5. Conclusions
The linguistic conclusions of the present research are broadly consistent withprevious findings about Gaelic-medium education in Scotland (Johnstone et al.
1999). Table 3 shows a tendency for an English-language dominance amongst Gaelic-
medium pupils in reading at the Primary 5 stage and in reading and writing at the
Primary 7 stage, patterns outlined in relation to Johnstone et al.’s research in Section
1.3. Tables 4�7 show attainment of Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils in
English writing to be similar, and show a Gaelic-medium pupil advantage in English
reading, patterns which also mirror Johnstone et al.’s findings. However, a difference
between the present study and Johnstone et al.’s (1999) study exists in relation to theproportion of Gaelic-medium pupils reaching the required curricular level in Gaelic
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for their school stage. The present research found a majority of Gaelic-medium
pupils (n�168) to be achieving Level C or above in Gaelic reading and writing (70
and 51% respectively, Table 1) at the Primary 5 stage compared with the minority
reported by Johnstone et al. (1999, 29) (21 and 19%, n�162). There was also a
difference in relation to the proportion of Gaelic-medium pupils reported to achieve
Level D in Gaelic reading in Primary 7: 83% in the present study (n�140), compared
with 59% in Johnstone et al. (1999, 27) (n�98). The proportion of pupils attaining
Level D in Gaelic writing remained fairly consistent over time: 64% in the present
study, compared with 61% in Johnstone et al. (1999, 27). Tables 1 and 2 of the present
study thus show the competencies of a clear majority of Gaelic-medium pupils in the
four Gaelic-language skills to be appropriate to stage as stipulated in the official 5�14 curricular guidelines.
The results of the present research differed from the results reported by
Johnstone et al. (1999) in relation to mathematics and science: we found no
difference between Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils’ attainment in science(where Johnstone et al. had found a Gaelic-medium pupil disadvantage) and we also
found no attainment differences between the pupil groups in mathematics (where
Johnstone et al. had found a Gaelic-medium pupil advantage) (Tables 4�7).
Such results are consistent with a relatively strong effectiveness of the Gaelic-
medium education system in Scotland, although in the absence of the statistical
controls noted in Section 4.1 they do not demonstrate that effectiveness conclusively.
The investigation of Gaelic-medium pupil attainment would be strengthened by the
availability of longitudinal data on Gaelic-medium and English-medium pupils’
progress incorporating potential predictors of attainment. Potential pupil-level
predictors of attainment include measures of general intelligence, of linguistic ability
and of home language background, and more refined assessments of socio-economic
status than were available here. Potential school-level predictors of attainment
include more in-depth knowledge of variables recording the structure in which
Gaelic-medium education is provided (e.g. a freestanding Gaelic-medium school
compared to a dual-stream school), the Gaelic- and English-language modelemployed (i.e. the proportion of the curriculum delivered in Gaelic and in English
at various school stages), and the methods of learning and teaching language. There
would be particular interest in the structural questions in the context of policy debate
in Scotland, where, although the majority of Gaelic-medium provision is delivered in
dual-stream schools, policy-makers now express a preference for freestanding schools
(Bord na Gaidhlig 2007, 20, 45). In due course, there may be a sufficient number of
freestanding Gaelic-medium schools to allow the assessment of whether the school
structure in which Gaelic-medium education is provided has an impact on pupil
attainment. Since that assessment will then involve a comparison of within-school
and between-school processes, multi-level modelling will be particularly important to
ensure validity of inferences.
The particular aspects of policy, pedagogy and practice which affect pupil
attainment will differ according to the specific social context in which bilingual
education is provided (Haugen 1966, 16; Romaine 2002, 4). However, a methodo-
logical and two substantive points raised by the present research might be of general
significance. The methodological point is that the use of multi-level modelling ispotentially relevant to the investigation of attainment in bilingual education systems
internationally. The first substantive point is that, in finding a bilingual pupil
advantage in English reading, the present research has replicated the findings of
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existing research on the educational attainments of pupils who have attended
immersion or bilingual Celtic-language programmes in the UK and Irish contexts
(Johnstone et al. 1999; Muller 2005; O hAinifein 2007; Sharp et al. 1973) and also
concords with international literature on pupil linguistic performance in school-
based second-language immersion programmes (Johnstone 2002). The second
substantive point is that multi-level modelling enabled the present research to
show the advantage in English-reading attainment amongst Gaelic-medium pupils to
be the result of a partnership between the home and the school. The relationship
between the school, the home and potentially also community factors in the
development of the linguistic competencies of pupils in bilingual education systems
would be a productive area for future research in both the Scottish context and in
other contexts internationally.
Notes
1. In the 2010�2011 school year, 14,488 primary pupils were reported by their parents to‘speak Welsh fluently at home’ (Welsh Assembly Government 2011, Table 7.6). Even if allsuch pupils were in Welsh-medium education, the proportion of Welsh-medium pupilswith such a Welsh-language home background is 24% (figures derived from WelshAssembly Government 2011, Table 7.2). In a study of 1184 parents of pupils in Irish-medium education, Harris et al. (2006) found 37% of parents to report themselves to useIrish ‘always’, ‘very often’ or ‘often’ with their child, with 63% rather reportingthemselves to use Irish ‘occasionally’, ‘seldom’ or ‘never’ (Harris et al. 2006, 139).
2. In the 2011�2012 school year, the two freestanding Gaelic-medium primary schools (inthe cities of Glasgow and Inverness) have a combined enrolment of 525 pupils. The 58dual-stream schools have a combined enrolment of 1893. Thus, 22% of Gaelic-mediumpupils now attend freestanding Gaelic-medium schools. However, at the time at whichthe data for this survey was collected (2006�2007, see Section 2 below), 11% of Gaelic-medium pupils (223 of 2092 pupils) attended the sole freestanding Gaelic-medium schoolin Glasgow (Robertson 2007, 4).
3. The primary curriculum has been governed by Curriculum for Excellence since 2010.The Curriculum for Excellence recommends a very similar approach to the school-baseddevelopment of bilingual competencies as did Gaelic 5�14 (LTS 2010: 3). However,national level attainment data relating to this curricular framework have only recentlybeen published, in the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (Scottish Government2012). Although Gaelic-medium pupils were included in that survey (with the surveyinstruments translated into Gaelic), the Gaelic-medium sector was not over-sampled andthere was no separate reporting of Gaelic-medium pupils’ attainment.
4. This figure is a maximum as it is based on the assumption that all pupils with Gaelic astheir main home language are in Gaelic-medium education.
5. English, Mathematics and Science are considered here as these are the subjects for whichwe have data from our source, the Scottish Survey of Achievement.
6. Johnstone et al. (1999) found Gaelic-medium pupils to have similar attainment in Gaelicand English writing at the Primary 5 stage, with 19% passing Level C in Gaelic,compared with 25% in English (29).
7. For this debate in relation to Celtic-medium education, see, for example, Baker (1995),Reynolds, Bellin, and Ab Ieuan (1998), Gorard (2000), O hAinifein (2007); for thegeneral debate about measuring school effects, see for example, Reynolds (2005) andSammons and Luyton (2009).
8. The SSA excluded Gaelic-medium pupils from their sampling frame (Scottish Govern-ment 2008, 124).
9. The SSA focused on one curricular area every year, in a three-yearly cycle of science,English and mathematics.
10. The remaining 17 Gaelic-medium primary providers were judged by local authoritiesand Bord na Gaidhlig � the statutory agency responsible for Gaelic development � not
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to be teaching science even in part through the medium of Gaelic (Scottish Government2009, 1).
11. There were demographic differences between the Gaelic-medium and this English-medium pupil group. Gaelic medium contained a higher proportion of girls than Englishmedium: 57% compared to 49% in Primary 5 and 56% compared to 50% in Primary 7.Gaelic medium also contained a lower percentage of pupils living in the most sociallydeprived circumstances: at Primary 5, there were 8% compared to 18% for Englishmedium; at Primary 7, there were 6% as against 18%. This contrast in socialcircumstances was probably a consequence of the schools where Gaelic-medium streamswere situated, rather than a distinction between the streams: combining the Primary 5and Primary 7 stages, we found that the Gaelic-medium streams had 7% of pupils in thedeprived category, whereas the English-medium streams in schools with a Gaelic-medium stream had 3%.
12. ‘Deprived’ in this connection means that the pupil lives ‘in one of the 20% most deprivedareas of Scotland as identified by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation’ (ScottishGovernment 2009, 3; Social Disadvantage Research Centre 2003).
13. The gap on the logistic scale is calculated by comparing the scores for Gaelic and Englishon a dimension of language. For example, for reading, the gap on the logistic scale is 2.65(English score) �1.53 (Gaelic score) �1.12
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Appendix 1: Outline of statistical models
It is easier to start with an explanation of the models in Tables 6 and 7, and then explain theothers.
Tables 6 and 7
The dependent variable yij, for pupil i in school j, takes the value 1 if the pupil has passed therelevant test, and 0 if not. The model is a multi-level version of logistic regression. Denote bypij the probability that the pupil passes, then the model is:
log pij= 1� pij
� �� �¼ b0 þ b1x1ij þ b2x2ij þ . . .þ uj ; (1)
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where the x values are the explanatory variables (e.g. gender), and the b values are regressioncoefficients to be estimated. The explanatory variable in which we are most interested is anindicator of whether or not a pupil is in Gaelic medium:
x1ij ¼ 1 if pupil i in school j is in Gaelic-medium education;
x1ij ¼ 0 if pupil i in school j is in English-medium education:
The uj term varies randomly among schools, and allows the y-values for all the pupils inschool j to be correlated with each other, thus taking account of the clustering in the sample.The coefficient of a particular explanatory variable x can also be allowed to vary amongschools, by representing it, for example, as:
b1j ¼ b1 þ u1j :
We use this to test whether the difference between the Gaelic-medium and English-mediumstreams varied among schools.
The formula on the right-hand side of the equation shown in (1) that involves thecoefficients b is referred to as the ‘fixed part’ of the model; the term uj is the ‘random part’. In alogistic model, there is no separate error term at the pupil level because the randomcomponent of a binomial distribution is a direct function of the proportion pij. For comparingthe school-level variance between models of different attainment variables (as we do in Section3.2 for Tables 6 and 7), we use a version of the multivariate outcome models described below inconnection with Table 3.
Table 3
We construct a model which takes account of the correlation of attainment on differentdimensions by the same pupil. For each pupil i in school j, we have two measures, ygij and yeij,recording whether or not that person had passed the relevant test in Gaelic and in English.This structure may be represented as a three-level logistic model, with the two measures nestedwithin pupils, who are in turn nested within schools (Rasbash et al. 2009, 222�4). There is thusa version of Equation (1) for each of the two outcomes, with no explanatory variables if (as inTable 3) we are using this simply to calculate appropriate standard errors for comparingaverage attainment. If the two intercept terms are labelled bg0 and be0, then the comparison ofGaelic and English attainment is given (on the logistic scale) by bg0�be0. There is a facility inMLwiN that carries out a chi-square test of the value of linear functions of estimatedcoefficients, and the significance tests reported in Table 3 are calculated in that manner.
We used a more elaborate version of this model for testing the differences between school-level variances in Tables 6 and 7. The models had five dichotomous dependent variables (theattainment measures in these tables), and each of these were regressed on gender, socialdeprivation and the indicator of being in Gaelic-medium education. The intercepts of each ofthe five regression equations varied at the school level and covaried across the schools. To fitsuch complex models requires a large amount of data, and so they could be used only for thecomparison of Gaelic-medium pupils with the all-of-English-medium group. The resultingestimates of these variances (and of the difference between Gaelic-medium and English-medium attainment) were close to those shown for the univariate models in Tables 6 and 7.Because the school-level variances were now being estimated within the same model, thedifferences between them could be tested with a chi-squared test on 1 df; it is these tests thatare reported in the main text.
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