Wherever you are in the world, a school playground full of young children makes the same noise. Squeals, shouts, chatter and laughter come together to make music of play and delight. Only when you get closer and start to make out some individual words does the language become clear.

At break time at Sleat Primary school on the Isle of Skye, as kids pelt around in their smart blue sweatshirts, the snatches of conversation are all spoken in English.

“Gimme a go!”

“He shoots! He scores!”

“It was him!”

“Just ignore her.”

Such words could soon be a thing of the past in this playground. If a group of determined parents get their way, backed by powerful pressure groups, English will not be spoken at Sleat Primary any more. Everyone, from the head teacher to the dinner lady, will be required to speak Gaelic.

Under this new regime, local children who want to learn in English will no longer be welcome. They will need to find another school. The nearest is in Broadford, which would mean a daily round trip of up to 50 miles for some youngsters in the catchment area.

Alternatively their parents — many of them incomers — could simply move their families away, forced out by a new and insidious kind of Highland clearance. All because their children speak the wrong language.

Sleat, the beautiful southwest peninsula of Skye, with its gorgeous bays and breathtaking views, has become a community riven in two. In arguments about the school’s future, ugly words are being hurled by warring parents: apartheid; fascist; mafia; ethnic cleansing. The mood is raw, and set to get worse in the run-up to a final decision by Highland council in a few months’ time.

At a public meeting last Wednesday night, the scene in Ardvasar hall is reminiscent of those old westerns where a town gathers to discuss the threat of a notorious gunslinger. Under harsh strip lights, about 160 people are crammed in, more than 20 of them forced to stand because there is no room. Glamorous-looking women in expensive clothes sit next to dirt-encrusted workmen with mud still on their boots.

The organisers are a hastily created group called Sleat Primary for All, whose spokesman is the Bunteresque Neil Robertson. His family came to live in Skye when he was a boy and he went to school in Dunvegan. One of his first jobs was as a scallop diver off the Sleat coast. Three years ago, pursuing a career as a freelance commercial writer, he moved back to Skye from Dunblane with his wife and son, James, who is now 10.

Standing on the small stage, Robertson, 51, begins by reading a declaration that ends with these words: “We are completely agreed on the premise that our children’s education is best met in a multilingual primary school, and that the community of Sleat will never support, or be seen to condone, any suggestion of segregation or discrimination. We really are one community, one school and two languages; equal, and for all our children.”

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