The number of responses per country varied greatly in the two parts of the survey, and our results can in no way be considered representative. In the survey of institutions, the majority of respondents were in France (65.4%), followed by Austria (15.9%), Germany (9.6%), Malta (8.5%), Canada (6.4%), Switzerland (6.4%) and Iceland (5.3%). There were also a large number of individual responses from respondents in several countries. In the learner survey, the largest number of responses came from learners in the UK (53%), followed by France and Austria (8% each), Malta (7%), Slovenia and Germany (6% each), and a few respondents from the Czech Republic, Iceland, Finland and Ireland (1% each). Around 20% of responses came from individual learners in other countries.

The two surveys were divided into five sections, focusing on the collection of data on different ways of assessing home language competences.

Survey of institutions

Learner survey

This Arabic-speaking learner explained why he wanted the school to assess his competences in all the languages he speaks, as he thinks this could help him find a job later on:

"I'm hoping to get an assessment of the competences in the languages I speak, and hope to develop them further to make my future and the job I get easier."

This Turkish-speaking pupil argued that assessing home language competences leads to higher levels of language literacy, and that each language should be considered equally important. In his view, assessment could even help to reduce prejudice against certain languages:

"If home languages are taught in schools as ordinary subjects, we can learn to read and write better in this home language! Every language should be considered important, there are prejudices about the Turkish language!"

Other learners simply wanted the opportunity to study their home language as part of mainstream education, like this Bulgarian-speaking learner in a Dutch-speaking context:

"It would be great if I could study my home language (Bulgarian) in Dutch schools."

Finally, there were learners who reflected on the fact that their home language is taught as a foreign language in their current school without any adaptation for learners for whom it is their first language:

"English is my mother tongue, but it is taught as a foreign language at school. No exception is made for the fact that my level is much higher, and I have to do the same exercises as my classmates, even if there is no difficulty. I'd like to be able to read and write in English at a level that suits me."