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Bid to double number of Gaelic speakers            10/10/11

The number of children with Gaelic has to double to allow the language to survive.

A new drive to encourage twice as many children into Gaelic medium education is a fundamental aim of Bòrd na Gàidhlig’s national plan to save the tongue.

The body wants the number of infants entering P1 Gaelic medium education to rise from 400 today to 800 by 2017.

It says this needs more cash, more teacher training and more teachers to meet parental demand - which comes down to the need of a co-ordinated approach by local authorities, the Scottish Government and other agencies.

The success of Gaelic-medium education, supported by the improvements during the past few decades in the status of Gaelic and in the range of provision available in the language, has slowed down the rate of decline in the number of Gaelic speakers.

But year-on-year far more Gaelic speakers are dying than are being replaced by younger users of the language.

Scotland’s draft Gaelic language plan which is out to consultation aims to continue the growth of young people speaking Gaelic and reach replacement level by 2031.