We are a 6 teacher co-educational primary school which strives to provide a well-ordered caring, happy and secure atmosphere where the intellectual, spiritual, physical, moral and cultural needs of all pupils are identified and addressed. We endeavour to enhance the self esteem of everyone in the school community, to imbue in the pupils respect for people and property and to encourage in them the idea of being responsible. We hope to nurture a sense of personal identity, self-esteem and awareness of one's particular abilities, aptitudes and limitations combined with a respect for the rights and beliefs of others and to promote excellence and equality in the development of the educational potential of all pupil, including those that are disadvantaged through economic, social, physical or psychological difficulties. The school provides an effective learning support programme including supplementary teaching. Under our school language policy, we intend to introduce French as a foreign language. Our school has disadvantaged status and this would give us a unique opportunity to offer a solid foundation in the French language before children transfer to secondary school. We will aim to give all learners access to a language education programme suited to their motivation, abilities and interests, and will aim to recognise and record diverse profiles of attainment in language learning. This in turn will provide a sound foundation for their future education in secondary school. We hope that our competence and performance in French will be greatly improved and thus would give us a greater understanding of the French primary school system and language policies. There will be 6 teachers partaking in this language immersion project. All 6 teachers have a competency in French to Leaving Cert/ A Level standard and a keen interest in the French language and have also visited France on numerous occasions. We would hope to organise visits to French schools, school/student exchange. This would enable us to spend some time in French primary school to interact with the staff and share good practise. We could analyse successful case studies and innovative educational projects illustrating co-operative language teaching/ learning between schools. We can experience first hand how interactive ICT tools can facilitate communication and creativity in language learning in a French setting. Our competence and performance in French would be greatly improved. It would give us a greater understanding of the French primary school system and language policies. We will have upskilled our teaching methodologies, our knowledge of the French language and French culture. For the first time, we will be able to offer a grounding in the French language to all our pupils on a structured planned basis. This will have enormous benefits to our pupils, parents and the greater community as our school has disadvantaged status (DEIS). The families will not incur any cost as the teachers will have the competency to deliver this as part of the overall language policy of the school. Once the programme is up and running in our school, it will be evaluated on a regular basis at our staff meetings. Our two resource teachers are shared with two other schools in a cluster area. The positive impact of this project will be felt by the whole school catchment area which has a total population of 400 people. It would be part of our plan to extend the teaching of French to all schools in that area. We would aspire to school exchanges, school tours to France in the future. This hopefully using some funding from our disadvantaged status could become an annual event. We have a bell ringing choir (campanology) and have contacted a school in France and are exploring an exchange visit to the school. As primary school teachers, we are already competent in the latest teaching methodologies and use this knowledge daily to deliver the Irish primary school curriculum to the varying needs of our pupils ie children from disadvantaged backgrounds, children with special needs and exceptionally able children. Using this basis, we hope to deliver French lessons in the same competency. We expect the impact of total immersion in the language and culture to be a marked improvement in our own competence in using French. It is vitally important for the school going forward to have real links with the authentic culture of a country when studying the language of that country. Our school would hope to enhance it's European dimension by informing the wider community about the course.