Commentary on Kavanagh dissertation summary

The summary of Lauren Kavanagh's dissertation provides very useful insights into the involvement of parents in one-way immersion programmes where the first language (L1) of parents is not the school language. It also serves as a reminder that without parents, there would be no Irish or other language immersion schools. The renewed growth in demand for Irish immersion over the last 40 years has been driven, primarily, by parents who often have to fight against the obstacles of the education system in order to establish new schools. It is a movement that has been very successful with, for example, the number of elementary Irish-immersion schools on the island of Ireland growing from eleven in 1972 to 177 in 2013. In the 2012-2013 school year, over 45,000 students were attending Irish-immersion schools at elementary and high-school level (www.gaelscoileanna.ie). This phenomenon is not unique to Ireland; Lenker and Rhodes (2007) provide evidence of a similar growth pattern in immersion education in the United States. Adapted from the source document