Fòram na Gàidhlig

I've often said that I think it's a mistake that kids from non-Gaelic speaking backgrounds were getting taught to write in Gaelic at school before they'd really got a grip on the spoken language, as is the case for the majority of kids in some of the Gaelic-medium units.

I read something interesting today: Starting school at seven 'can boost pupils' reading skills' (the Telegraph).

In a study in New Zealand, keeping kids in a activity-based nursery school for an extra two years and only starting reading and writing at the age of 7 not only did them no long-term harm, but apparently led to better results -- and this was schooling in their first language. Think how much more important this would be in a second, non-native language.

I think that in most of European states school age begins at 6 and in some even at 7 and I've never heard about any evidence that either gave pupils of a particular group any long-term advantage over the other two...

I don't know if it's true for children, but I know that when I took Russian, we were NOT to make any written representation of the language (a couple of linguists got yelled at for being fancy about it) until we'd had a handle on the sounds of the language. The idea was that seeing the written form could influence you to mispronounce things according to the spelling. I can certainly see that being a problem with Gaelic, even more so than Russian (though really, both are pretty phonetic once you understand the writing). Maybe this is what they were getting at?