Donald stepped down from his role as Highland Council's Gaelic quality development officer with the authority at Christmas, but will rejoin his former colleagues for today's ceremony, which he sees as marking a significant milestone in Gaelic education.

"The new school in Inverness has been a big symbolic step," the Scorguie resident said.

"The school raises the profile of Gaelic medium education. People will be much more aware of it than they would of several classes in different schools. It also symbolises that Gaelic education is here to stay. When I started it was still in the experimental stage. We've gone very much beyond that. Now it's an integrated part of the system."

Research has shown that the number of pupils in Gaelic speaking education who come from Gaelic speaking homes are in the minority, with just 10 per cent having two parents or guardians who are Gaelic speakers and a further 30 per cent with one other Gaelic speaker in the home.

"That means 60 per cent have no Gaelic in the home at all and when we asked the children themselves, only 15 per cent said they spoke Gaelic in the home," Donald pointed out.

"I hesitate to say this but it's almost like it's getting fashionable. If you ask people why they send their children to Gaelic medium education they give very different reasons. Some have family connections for others it's because Gaelic is the language of the Highlands and for others it's because of the career opportunities."

Donald's own son Donald Neil is among those who have taken advantage of these new opportunities as a trainee broadcaster with the BBC in Inverness, but having children from English speaking homes immersed in Gaelic at school is a reverse of Donald's own educational experience.

Brought up in the Harris village of Ardhasig, Gaelic was the language of the home and the wider community, but it was English which was the language of the school.

"I remember my teacher, who was a Gaelic speaker herself, saying to us that we'd get a Gaelic lesson on Friday afternoons if we'd been good all week. I don't think we can have been very good because I don't remember getting very much Gaelic," he recalled with a laugh.

Because Harris was then classed as part of Inverness-shire, Donald was sent to Portee rather than Stornoway to complete his school education, followed by university in Aberdeen before he began an academic career in Glasgow University's Celtic department.

This led on to an involvement in Gaelic drama and Donald took plays and pantomimes to schools around Scotland. He also had some behind the scenes involvement in setting up the first professional Gaelic theatre company.

The experience also proved useful when Donald wrote material for the television series "Can Seo", which made innovative use of television to teach Gaelic to non-native speakers.

While at Glasgow University, he was also seconded to a community project in the Western Isles, which involved Donald and his colleagues in various aspects of Hebridean life.

He then had a short spell as a teacher at Grantown Grammar School, though perhaps surprisingly teaching English rather than Gaelic.

"That was simply because there were no Gaelic jobs available but there was an English job going," he explained.

"I enjoyed that as well, having a break from Gaelic, but I also enjoyed going back to Gaelic."

In 1985 he left teaching to become an education officer with the Gaelic development agency Comunn na Gàidhlig (CnaG), moving from there into what was then Highland Regional Council in 1988 when Gaelic medium education was still in its infancy.

"Gaelic medium education started in 1985 in Inverness and Glasgow with just a small number of pupils in each area and when I was with CnaG one of the main things I was involved with was promoting Gaelic medium education," he said.

"I used to work with parents and I used to work with local authorities including Highland. The work with parents used to entail me going into villages, finding out where there were young children, knocking on doors and hoping to get invited in for a cup of tea and a chat about Gaelic education."

Former Highland Council Gaelic development officer Donald John MacLeod. Bobby Nelson

When he moved to the council he continued with much the same work although this was now led by demand from parents. Donald explained that the council itself would not normally take the initiative in setting up Gaelic education classes but would always respond positively to any interest from parents.

Demand for Gaelic education continued to grow and by the 1990s Donald was involved in setting up as many as four new classes a year.

"There is quite a lot involved in that," he said. "It had go through the committee and the council and you had to get the school ready and find teachers, which was a huge problem sometimes. There are more people going into it now because they know they can get jobs and there are more ways of doing it. People can now study where they are by distance learning and can also do it part time. We have four probationers this year and all four have come through this route."

From its small beginnings 22 years ago there are now around 1000 children in Gaelic medium education.

"That may not seem a lot but in the Highlands and particularly in small communities that makes a tremendous difference," Donald said.

"It has meant that in areas where the language has died out or was close to dying out there is a new generation of Gaelic speakers.

"We had an old lady saying that in her youth she remembered Gaelic being spoken on the streets of Ullapool and it was so welcome for her to hear young voices speaking Gaelic in that area."

In the early days of Gaelic medium education, the Highlands would look to other places such as Wales and Ireland as models of minority language education. Now other countries are looking at the Gaelic model.

In the last week Donald has been to Edinburgh to meet a delegation from Afghanistan interested in seeing how Gaelic medium education can be adapted to Pashtu which, though one of the country's major languages, has never had the status in education enjoyed by Farsi (Persian).

"I have been reading some things about it" Donald commented. "People say things like you can't teach mathematics in Pashtu, which is something they used to say about Gaelic.

"As for Gaelic itself, the future looks a little brighter than it did when Donald began his council career thanks, in no small part, to the contribution of Gaelic medium education.

"In 1981 the whole situation was quite bleak; families weren't passing the language on. My own sisters stayed in the Western Isles and none of their children have Gaelic. That was not unusual," Donald said.

He may have now retired, but Donald does not intend to be inactive. As well as those long postponed DIY jobs and tackling the garden, he also hopes to spend more time on his croft in Harris, take up photography more seriously and write some more educational material. He also wants to turn full circle by returning to teaching, though this time for adults.

"It's what I trained to do originally but work took me away from it" he explained.

"Though people have been very kind in talking bout his successes at farewell gatherings Donald has his own view about where credit for the success of Gaelic medium education should go.

"The people who have actually done the work are the teachers," he declared. "At the end of the day it's the teacher in the classroom who makes it succeed."

c.macleod@inverness-courier.co.uk

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