Employment

Glenurquhart Primary School has five English Medium and one Gaelic Medium class.  They work to ensure equal respect for both languages through various approaches and have developed a commendably multilingual school culture.  

Over the past year, the school has established a Gaelic nursery within the school and secured onward Gaelic provision at Secondary level.  In recognition of this and in highlighting the work on Gaelic, the school chose to have their annual DYW focus on the Gaelic language with a view to also achieving this award.

Pupils in four of the Gaelic Medium and English Medium classes worked together in small groups to interview someone who uses Gaelic in their workplace.  Teaching staff approached individuals from a range of occupations, with 24 different partners in total being included. 

From this, pupils were able to choose who they were interested in interviewing. They created their own research questions, conducted a research interview over the telephone or Google Meet (due to Covid), took notes and created an individual presentation to share with their peers and their families about their chosen job.  The success criteria encouraged the children to focus on the use of Gaelic in the workplace and to identify skills for work.  These were shared at the start as part of a Key Assessment Task which also enabled children to self-assess their ongoing work against them.  The presentations and the Key Assessment Task were then within pupil profiles to share with their families and the wider community.  Two volunteers from P7 shared their presentations with the whole school at a celebration assembly.

Glenurquhart Primary School’s submission showcases a project bringing language focus to their annual DYW project involving 4 classes across P5-7, in both Gaelic medium and English medium classes. The school sourced an extensive range of partners, twenty-four in total, covering a wide spread of career interests and this undoubtedly added to the success and impact of the project; the verification team all commended this aspect. It also demonstrates the commitment of staff and the willingness of Gaelic speakers in the workplace to collaborate for the benefit of learners.

While being mainly focused around gathering and sharing information regarding the use of Gaelic in the workplace, job skills such as interpersonal skills, communication and organisation are also very evident in this project. The output from this was beautifully documented, both in the evidence submitted here, and in class blogs and on social media. Sharing of research and information gathered also took place with the school and wider community; the impact of this project is clearly far-reaching.

The submission states that the next planned focus on languages and DYW is in 2024 but it is so pleasing and encouraging to see that multilingualism is a core feature of Glenurquhart Primary School already, and that these employability links will continue and develop until then too. 

This is an exemplary submission and we commend and congratulate Glenurquhart Primary School on their excellent work in linking languages and employability!