Towards Language Education Excellence in Northern Ireland’s Primary Schools

Sharon Jones
May 28
5 min read

Updated: May 28

Sharon Jones | 28th May 2025 | Opinion Piece

In this opinion piece, Sharon Jones, drawing on her teaching and research in languages and education, reflects on the potential of broadening access to the benefits of languages curriculum provision in primary schools. From the perspective of Initial Teacher Education in Northern Ireland, she considers the opportunities and challenges involved in taking the next steps towards excellence in this important curriculum area

Introduction

Working in university-based Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Northern Ireland (NI) we invest in student development through mentoring conversations that reflect on both strengths and areas for improvement. We set incremental development targets, and provide evidence-based, research-informed guidance and support. As with any developmental journey, there are successes to celebrate; strategies to evaluate; and challenges to address. In this opinion piece I adopt a similar approach, reflecting on language education in Primary Schools in Northern Ireland currently; next steps towards excellence; and needed support.

Current context

The NI Curriculum established in 2007, is currently under review. As a framework rather than content-based curriculum it has many strengths, offering a high degree of teacher agency, and favouring ‘joined-up’, skills-infused, cross-curricular learning. But from the perspective of language education, the review is timely. For with the emergence of our region from conflict since 1998, our demography has become more culturally and linguistically diverse. And yet, as Collen (2021) reports, NI has the shortest time for compulsory language learning in Europe. Within the United Kingdom, and despite the Republic of Ireland’s investment in Languages Connect, NI is an outlier, as Ayres-Bennett and Forsdick (2024) highlight, due to the lack of a statutory requirement to provide language education in primary schools. This situation gives the impression that languages are not important enough to be an educational priority.

Although reform in language education is urgent (British Academy 2020: 6), developing provision in NI, as in Scotland, must contend with a turbulent environment of competing pressures. Our schools are places of promise, and many demonstrate high performance, but there are serious concerns involving teacher workload and school budgets. After the Covid-19 pandemic, when schooling in NI was ‘dismantled’ (Walsh et al 2020), and with the impact of digital screens, the challenges schools encounter are daunting. Educational priorities jostle for position in face of increasingly complex pupil needs.

Next Steps

Create Opportunity

Despite such challenges, Myles (2017) argues that primary teachers are excellent motivators, which is very advantageous in language learning. And although the optimum starting age for languages is debatable, Myles concludes that: ‘even an hour per week has the potential to awaken a lifelong interest in foreign languages, which must be welcome in a country where foreign language learning is undervalued and in crisis.’ My previous experience as a post-primary languages teacher, and currently as a university-based Initial Teacher Educator in primary and post-primary education in NI, leads me to conclude that, on balance, all children in primary schools in NI should have the opportunity to access language education, at least in Key Stage Two.

Making such provision statutory would send a message that languages are valued. It would also ensure that children in every primary school, irrespective of socio-economic background, could access the benefits languages bring. Significantly, for a society emerging from conflict but still marked by prejudice, language learning broadens minds by opening up new stories, cultures, and ways of thinking, whether they be Irish or Ulster Scots; European, Asian, or Middle Eastern; contemporary or classical. Moreover, NI research suggests language education can strengthen the mental health and well-being of our growing population of migration experienced children. Importantly, benefits including bolstered creativity and communication skills, and broader appreciation of cultural difference, are already being enjoyed in our Irish Medium Education sector.

Collaborate; Communicate; Be Creative

To develop excellent primary languages provision in NI we must garner valuable learning from our colleagues in IME (see Rogan’s opinion piece in our collection), and from language education policy, practice and research across the UK, the Republic of Ireland, and beyond. Collaboration between all stakeholders is imperative to devise a robust framework for provision. The route map for development, not least around transition to post-primary, must be creatively conceived and constructed; clearly communicated; underpinned by sufficient funding; and given a realistic lead-time.

Cultivate Excellent Teachers

Excellent primary language teachers are crucial, so it is encouraging to note the commitment to sustained investment in teacher professional learning in the Education Minister’s Ten Point Plan for Educational Excellence in Northern Ireland. Appointing a qualified primary classroom teacher with a high level of language competence as language leader to coordinate provision in each primary school would require significant funding, but offer exciting potential for excellence.

High-quality ITE is fundamental in building teacher capacity, as Ayes-Bennett and Forsdick (2024) note. The four-year BEd primary programmes in Stranmillis and St Mary’s University Colleges offer extensive school partnerships, and vibrant international mobility programmes to enhance students’ linguistic skills. But although a specialist final year course in primary languages pedagogy is offered at Stranmillis, and a post-primary PGCE in Modern Languages at Queen’s University, sustained government investment across all undergraduate and postgraduate ITE programmes in NI will be needed in order to prepare teachers of primary languages, alongside investment in Teacher Professional Learning and Shared Education.

Connect the Curriculum

Success can hinge on winning hearts and minds, and occasionally on dispelling myths. Fears among school principals and teachers that language education will constitute yet another burden in an overloaded system might be addressed by developing pedagogical expertise. Interdisciplinary approaches such as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) can be harnessed to implement language provision within and across existing curriculum areas like Literacy; World Around Us; and Physical Education, and language learning in primary can be integrated easily into daily routines. As Ayres-Bennett and Forsdick (2024) conclude, ‘Part of the solution lies in developing a more joined-up approach to languages and the broader curriculum (Zhang and Hancock)’.

Conclusion

If our children stand to benefit from the rich dividends of multilingualism described by Ayres-Bennett and Forsdick (2024), ‘cognitive health and wellbeing … openness, tolerance and the ability to see the world through other people’s eyes, to say nothing of the pure joy of mastering another language and gaining access to both the high and popular culture associated with it’, then the investment needed to develop excellent language education provision in NI Primary Schools should be a price we are willing to pay.

About the Author

Sharon Jones read Modern and Medieval Languages at Girton College Cambridge and completed doctoral studies at Ulster University. She is Senior Lecturer in Education (with Modern Languages) at Stranmillis University College Belfast, and an internationally experienced teacher educator. Sharon has served as executive committee member of the University Council for Languages, representing Northern Ireland, and currently chairs the British Educational Research Association’s British Curriculum Forum.