Local organiser: Lília Maria Vicente, Ministry of Education, Directorate-General for School Administration
ECML experts: Catherine Carré-Karlinger (Austria), Katja Schnitzer (Switzerland)
Participants: 27 school leaders, teachers of the language of schooling, researchers
The Supporting Multilingual Classrooms training workshop, which 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, was organised on 13-14 November 2025 in Lisbon by the Portuguese Directorate-General for School Administration of the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation. This entity is responsible for the school principals’ Continuing Professional Development, (CPD) on the theme of "Inclusive approaches in language education” within the module on "Developing language-aware schools".
School principals and other educational actors from school clusters that show a diversified cultural and linguistic reality were invited, in order to provide them with moments of sharing and reflection on their contexts and practices, and, above all, to show that multilingualism and cultural diversity are added values in the life of schools, contributing to promote inclusion.
In fact, the responsibility that falls to school principals to manage school clusters that incorporate pupils from many different nationalities requires the development of strategies that ensure that all members of their community have opportunities to develop awareness of the value of multilingualism for all and integrate these opportunities into their practices, which does not always seem easy. It is therefore 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 and to give them access to other strategies and approaches that enable them to meet the challenges posed by these new educational contexts.
Lília Maria Vicente, local organiser, 19 December 2025
ECML project website: Supporting multilingual classrooms, ECML-EC cooperation agreement 2025 "Innovative methodologies and assessment in language learning"