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Education Reform: Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement

Implementations

Education Reform – 1998

The Northern Ireland Act brought about substantial changes in terms of outlining strategies to deal with the treatment of languages, a Center Community Relations Unit was established to come up with a language use policy concerning the Irish language.

Several measures were adopted regarding the use of the Irish language in schools. On 21 July 1998, the UK government issued Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 [1998 No. 1759 (N.I. 13)], devolving power to the Department of Education to support and promote Irish language education and Irish-medium schools. In December, the government of Northern Ireland also passed the Education Act.

Education Reform – 1999

The Northern Ireland Act (1998) brought about substantial changes in terms of outlining strategies to deal with the treatment of languages, the North/South Language Implementation Body was established in December 1999.

Education Reform – 2000

The Northern Ireland Act (1998) brought about substantial changes in terms of outlining strategies to deal with the treatment of languages, the government signed the charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2000.

In 2000, the Department of Education established Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta (CnaG), a representative body for Irish-medium education. According to the CnaG, there were around 90 Irish-medium schools at the pre-school, primary, and post-primary levels as of 2012, which provided an Irish-medium education to almost 5,000 children.¹ There appeared to be steady progress in the promotion of Irish-medium education. Before the agreement, fewer than 500 students were enrolled in Irish language schools.

“Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta”, accessed February 7, 2013, http://www.comhairle.org/english/.