European Language Models in Education

Language-in-education programs can have multiple incarnations as there is no one program that fits all sites and circumstances. Europe is a good example of this diversity of programmes.

In territories where a regional, minority or minoritized language coexists with a hegemonic or State language, one model has emerged as the flagship model as it attains the goal of guaranteeing that both languages -the regional and the State language- are effectively and fully learned in the education system: the language immersion model. However, this model has been under discussion over the past months.

Too often, those debates aimed to discredit the so-called language immersion programme, despite it has been praised by numerous international experts and organizations, such as the Commission’s High-Level Group on Multilingualism (European Commission 2006:12), the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues (2020), and the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

In order to contribute in an accurate, well-informed and rigorous manner to this debate, the NPLD has commissioned Professor Avel.lí Flors and Professor Montserrat Sendra (Universitat de Barcelona), under the coordination of Vicent Climent (Government of Catalonia), a comparative research study showcasing the cases of Brittany, Catalonia, Basque Country, Ireland and Wales to shed some light on what models serve best to the goal of guaranteeing full bilingualism. The preliminary results of this report will be presented during the Round Table “European Language Models in Education”, to be held in Brussels (Wales House) on 19 May 2022.

Debates on any public policy – and the language-in-education model is a public policy – must be strictly based on unbiased, non-partisan and rigorous data. The intention of this report is to provide the necessary data that will certainly be useful for a better account of the language models in education.

. . .

Practicalities:

When:  19 May 2022

Where: Wales House | Rond-point Schuman 11 Brussels, Belgium

Translation services from/to French, Spanish and English will be provided.

Get involved:

Please note this is an invitation only event.

Press:

Media inquiries can be addressed to info@ideasforeurope.eu

. . .

This event is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the event nor the opinions of the speakers.

. . .

This is a joint event of Coppieters Foundation and Network For The Promotion of Linguistic Diversity (NPLD). The Wales House in Brussels has kindly offered its premises as a courtesy for the celebration of this event.

. . .

Thank you for following our activities over the past few years. We hope our updates have been useful to you. We would like to keep informing you about upcoming events, new publications, summer schools and job vacancies. Subscribe to our newsletter to hear from us in your inbox.