To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in what proportion of schools in Northern Ireland pupils are taught Irish as a second language. (135020)

The requested information is not available for primary schools. The following information relates to examination entries in Irish for the 2005-06 academic year in English-medium schools.

Of the 229 English-medium post primary schools:

79 (34 per cent.) post primary schools had entries in GCSE Irish;

49 (21 per cent.) post primary schools had entries in A-level Irish.

Notes:

1. Irish-medium primary and post primary schools have been excluded from this analysis.

2. In the 2005-06 academic year, two post primary schools had pupils being taught in Irish-medium units. It is not possible to exclude these pupils from the analysis.

3. The GCSE and A-level examination data have been taken from the University of Bath dataset.

4. The number of post primary schools is taken from the annual school census.