Dr Bill Wilson, SNP MSP for the West of Scotland and member of Holyrood’s Cross-Party Group on the Scots Language, conducted a survey of all local education authorities (LEAs) to investigate whether discrimination against Scots exists in their schools and what they were doing to promote the language through education.

“There was a study, ‘Language at Letham’ that monitored Scots language in a West Lothian primary school for a year, some time ago which indicated that teachers were showing inadvertent, subconscious discrimination against Scotsspeaking pupils.

To be fair to the teachers, they were completely unaware of this and they were horrified when they found out that that’s what they were doing. And from that, this occurred to me, because I’ve been an active Scots language campaigner for decades and I’ve yet to meet a Scots language speaker who was not at some point punished in school for using Scots. And the fact that there was still this, perhaps not open punishment, but this kind of subconscious discrimination, was quite worrying to me and I was keen to do some kind of investigation into the issue,” Wilson tells Holyrood.

The MSP wrote to the Directors of Education at every local authority in Scotland asking them if they were aware of any discrimination towards Scots in their schools and what action they were taking to incorporate the language in education.

The report entitled ‘Scots’ Richtfu Hame – the Clessruim!’ (Scots Belongs in the Classroom!) paints a relatively positive picture of the recognition of Scots in schools. Ten councils were worthy of a special mention - Aberdeenshire, East Lothian, Edinburgh, Dumfries & Galloway, Dundee, Falkirk, Inverclyde & Renfrewshire, Shetland, South Lanarkshire and West Lothian. However, it highlighted much room for improvement and called for more joint working across local authorities and greater resourcing for the work being done in schools.

For Wilson, the key benefit of teaching Scots in schools is confidence. Scottish youngsters and Scots as a nation are lacking in self-confidence, he believes and a key factor underlying this lack of confidence is the suppression of Scots in education: “One of the main things is that it helps build self-confidence. If as a child you are speaking Scots in school, saying richt and not right, fower and not four and you’re being corrected all the time and then you go home and your parents are saying richt and fower, then the effect on you of being told that your parents’ speech is incorrect and that your entire background identity is somehow inferior, I mean, I don’t think any reasonable human being can deny that that will affect children in many ways in their education and elsewhere. Whereas if somebody is saying to children, ‘well, actually, yes, that’s ok, you just have two languages’ they will then be brought up in the self-confidence of knowing ‘this is my culture and I’m confident in it’. And I always emphasise that it’s not that a culture is superior or inferior, it’s just your culture. And it’s important to you.

“I have no doubt that a huge part of the lack of self-confidence people talk about in Scotland stems from language. It stems from the fact that people have been brought up in Gaelic-speaking areas and Scots-speaking areas 10 or 20 years back to believe their language was genuinely inferior, that it was not fit for use, and that’s a massively damaging thing to tell anyone who’s young and that they will certainly carry with them. I’ve no doubt that if we correct that – we’re doing it I’m happy to say in the Gaelicspeaking areas and we can do it in the Scots areas – we can build that self-confidence.”

As well as boosting confidence, learning Scots in school also benefits language acquisition and literacy, according to the research.

The report makes a number of recommendations including more collaboration and sharing of best practice on Scots between LEAs and between schools. It also commends the work of Itchy Coo, the imprint for Scots children’s books whose outreach officer, Matthew Fitt, works with teachers and pupils across the country to help them engage with the language. The report suggests, however, that the project requires more funding and support. Wilson intends to submit the inquiry to the ongoing Scots Language Audit and send it to all LEAs in the hope that they will act on the recommendations.

For full article, see page 39