Young migrants
Supporting multilingual classrooms

Belgium has become the 34th member state of the Enlarged Partial Agreement on the European Centre for Modern Languages!

The Belgian authorities notified the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, of the country’s accession on 20 July 2021.

Belgium, which is one of the founder members of the Council of Europe, has been invited to nominate ECML national contacts and will henceforth be able to fully participate in the Centre’s programme of activities.

Belgium is set to host its first activity as an official member state of the ECML on 7-8 October in Brussels - a "Supporting Multilingual Classrooms" national training event, wihin the framework of the Centre's joint action with the European Commission.

Local coordinators from 9 countries (Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden) met with the project team in an online meeting on 10 March to advance preparations for national workshops to be hosted on the themes of Supporting Multilingual Classrooms.

The series of events targeting practitioners, multipliers and administrators at national level will take place between April and mid-December 2021. In view of the ongoing pandemic, a number of the workshops will be delivered online, with the possibility of face-to-face events from late summer/autumn depending upon the situation.

The Supporting Multilingual Classrooms initiative, providing training to Member States of the European Union and the European Centre for Modern Languages, is organised through a joint cooperation action with the European Commission - first launched in 2013. The action will offer training and consultancy over the next year to around 500 language professionals within national systems.

Further details on the events and how to participate will be made available on the Supporting Multilingual Classrooms website.

The European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe together with the European Commission are pleased to announce the launch of a new round of RELANG and Supporting Multilingual Classrooms workshops within the joint action on Innovative methodologies and assessment in language learning. RELANG focuses on relating foreign/second language curricula, tests and examinations to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), and Supporting Multilingual Classrooms focuses on the linguistic integration of migrant learners in schools across Europe.

The activities are scheduled to take place between mid-March and mid-December 2021, each initiative offering up to 9 national workshops during this period. In view of the ongoing pandemic, workshops will be delivered online for the foreseeable future.

The call is open to current European Union member states and the additional member states of the ECML until 19 February 2021.

For further information on how to request a workshop, please contact Adelina Rosca (adelina.rosca@ecml.at), the ECML-EC cooperation agreement coordinator.

Local organiser: Maria Nezi, 1^st Regional Centre of Educational Planning in the Regional Directorate of Primary and Secondary Education of Attica, Greece

ECML experts: Chantal Muller, Belgium; Catherine Carré-Karlinger, Austria

Participants: 30 (teacher educators)

Programme

“33 educational coordinators, responsible for the training of all language teachers (foreign language teachers and teachers of the language of schooling) from 8 Regional Centres of Educational Planning in Greece (Attica, Thessaly, Peloponnese, Crete, Western Greece, South Aegean) attended the Supporting Multilingual Classrooms (SMC) workshop on 20 -21 February 2020, held at the Intercultural Gymnasium of Athens. The two-day workshop was hosted by the Greek Ministry of Education and funded by the EU Commission and the ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages).

In recent years, the number of refugees and migrants in Greece has increased greatly. As a consequence, most of the schools in Attica as well as in other Regions of Greece are coping with a heterogeneous/multicultural student population.

Creating an inclusive school environment in which all languages are valued was the main theme of the workshop. Participants explored tools to improve the quality of language teaching and support the development of plurilingual competences for all learners in multilingual classes.

As a result of the event a Moodle platform will be set up to build a network of the workshop participants for mutual support and for a blended learning training programme. A 16-page brochure summarizing the content of the workshop is also to be published.”

Maria Nezi, local organiser, 27 March 2020

ECML project website: Supporting multilingual classrooms – EU-ECML cooperation agreement 2019-2020 "Innovative methodologies and assessment in language learning"

The Network of Experts working on the Social Dimension of Education and Training (NESET), one of the seven official knowledge providers of European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC), has recently published a new analytical report, titled ‘The future of language education in Europe: case studies of innovative practices’.

The main purpose of this report is to explore emerging innovative approaches and strategies of language teaching in Europe supporting learners’ plurilingualism, inspire educators and policy makers to innovate and implement forward-looking policies and practices in language education, and contribute to the implementation of the EU Council Recommendation on a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of languages (adopted in May 2019).

The publication also refers to the work of the Council of Europe’s European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) and highlights 8 projects and tools promoting plurilingual pedagogies (see pp. 4, 36, 37, 40, 61, 88, 114, 118, 128):

• Language in subjects - Developing language awareness in subject classes (ww.ecml.at/languageinsubjects)
• A roadmap for schools to support the language(s) of schooling (www.ecml.at/roadmapforschools)
• ICT-rev - Inventory of ICT tools and open educational resources (https://ict-rev.ecml.at/)
• CONBAT+ - Plurilingualism and pluriculturalism in content-based teaching: A training kit (https://conbat.ecml.at/)
• CARAP - FREPA: A Framework of reference for pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures - Competences and resources (https://carap.ecml.at/)
• Maledive - Teaching the language of schooling in the context of diversity - Study materials for teacher development (https://maledive.ecml.at/)
• MARILLE - Promoting plurilingualism - Majority language in multilingual settings (https://marille.ecml.at/)
• CLIL-CD - European Framework for CLIL Teacher Education (https://clil-cd.ecml.at)

You can access the full report (English) and executive summaries (English, French and German) on the website nesetweb.eu.

Local organiser: Lília Maria Vicente, Directorate-General for School Administration, Ministry of Education and Science

ECML experts: Brigitte Gerber, Switzerland; Mercè Bernaus, Spain

Participants: 24 (school principals, heads of department of languages, representatives of school advisers and policy makers)

Programme

The Supporting Multilingual Classrooms initiative aims to help member states ensure access to quality education for migrant learners and bridge the attainment gap between these learners and non-migrant pupils. Given this context, the Portuguese Directorate-General for School Administration recently hosted the second Supporting Multilingual Classrooms workshop on the topic of developing language-aware schools.

Its main goals were: i) to call school principals and other education professionals’ attention to the advantages of multilingualism for promoting academic success and enabling inclusion; ii) to help principals’ and teachers developing awareness regarding the importance of multilingualism; iii) to promote the development of teaching and learning practices intended to promote multilingualism in each and every classroom; iv) to engage the wider school community and municipalities in the task of promoting multilingualism as a way to improve meaningful learning.

The school principals have to manage school clusters that incorporate pupils from many different nationalities. This requires the establishment of strategies that ensure that every member of their community has opportunities to develop awareness of the value of multilingualism for all and integrate these opportunities into their practices. Therefore, it is very important to give school principals the opportunity to share their reality with others and to get to know new ways of addressing their problems in a more effective and rewarding way.

Lília Maria Vicente, local organiser, 23 March 2020

ECML project website: Supporting multilingual classrooms – EU-ECML cooperation agreement 2019-2020 "Innovative methodologies and assessment in language learning"