Young Interpreters


We are very proud of the many children in our school who speak more than one language. Some children speak three! Across the school, we have 240 children who speak over 35 different languages.

At St. Mary’s, some of our multilingual children have special training to become young interpreters. They welcome and support children who are new to English and their families in their first few days and months at school.  Our young interpreters make a positive contribution to our school and community by helping their friends to navigate the building, find key places and resources and learn some basic vocabulary. Once they are settled in, they may share a book in their home language or help them with their learning in class.

Our children’s diversity team work with a team of adults to organise events to help our school community celebrate the rich languages and cultures represented.

Here’s a video all about our Young Interpreters, filmed in 2018 by RTE’s ‘News2Day’ programme.

Here’s a video from our International Day 2017, filmed by RTE’s ‘News2Day’ programme.

We also filmed the work of our Young Interpreters as part of the toolkit designed to support teachers across Ireland implement the Primary Language Curriculum with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).

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