World congress on language policies

DEVELOPMENTS OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION IN THE EU

Alie van der Schaaf
Fryske Akademy, Ljouwert

This lecture is about the main developments in bilingual primary education in minority or regional languages in the European Union. Education is a complex and dynamic field where many changes are going on.

I will first give you a division of languages in the European Union to make clear what languages we are talking about. Then I will tell you something about Mercator-Education, the organisation I represent. Subsequently, I will give some basic arguments about the importance of bilingual education and will pay attention to different aspects of bilingual education, putting emphasis on legislation and curriculum. I will use material of 15 language communities in the EU. My ultimate goal is to provide you with an idea of the multiple developments that are taking place in the European Union concerning education and regional and minority languages.

European regional or minority languages

As Mercator-Education we only work with autochtonous languages, not with the recent immigrant languages. Within the present 15 member states of the EU, up to 40 million people in over 45 communities speak a lesser used language, more or less 10% of the population.

There are 11 official languages in the EU. Eight of them also appear as minority languages in another country. This is the case with the following languages: Swedish, Danish, German, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian and Dutch. Three of the official languages of the Union are not used in another country of Europe: Spanish, Portuguese and English.

We can distinguish the following groups of minority languages:

1.Unique languages in one state: Welsh (UK), Galician (S), Sardinian (I), Sorbian (G) and West Frisian (NL);

2.Unique languages spread over more states: Basque (S+F), Catalan (S+F+I);

3.Trans-frontier languages that are both minority and majority, depending on the state: German (I+F+B+D), Danish (G), Slovene (I+A);

4.National languages at state level, but without official working languages of the EU, e.g. Luxembourgisch and Irish;

5.Non-territorial languages, like Roma and Jiddish

The way these languages are protected and supported by the individual member state governments differs widely which has far-going consequences for the situation of the language itself. That is the reason not to opt for a linguistic classification, but for a political, state-oriented classification. For the position of a regional or minority language in public domains of life, such as education, broadcasting, public administration, etc., the political and legal context of the language community concerned is essential.

Another factor that can be taken into account with a classification of the languages is the size of the group of speakers. This also varies very much and goes from about 300 Cornish speakers in the United Kingdom, to 2000 Croatian in Italy and then to 6 m. speakers of Catalan in Catalonia.

The Mercator project

Gerardus Mercator was a well-known 16th-century Flemish cartographer. He was one of the first to put place-names on maps in the language of the region concerned. And that is exactly the reason why the name Mercator was given to the documentation and information network on lesser used languages, which in 1987, was established on the initiative of the European Commission. The name Mercator symbolises a policy of respect for Europe's rich linguistic and cultural heritage, including the regional or minority languages.

It all started in 1987. The lack of data on lesser used languages, such as its position in education, media and legislation, was striking. Moreover, any information available on the theme, was elaborated in the language communities themselves and interested people faced a difficult access. In order to improve the accessibility of these data, the Mercator documentation and information network was given the responsibility to collect the data in a systematic way. At this moment, this is done by three different centres, each with its own theme: Mercator-Media in Aberystwyth, at the department of Information and Library Studies of the University of Wales; Mercator-Legislation is entrusted to CIEMEN in Barcelona, an international centre for ethnic minority languages. All Mercator centres provide information, elaborate applied research and maintain databases.

We work in close co-operation with the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages (EBLUL) in Brussels, an NGO that provides general information on regional and minority languages and is an important lobby organisation for regional and minority languages.

Mercator-Education

Since its start Mercator Education has developed several inventory studies in different fields of education, all focussed on one specific theme: minority languages in primary education (EMU)provision of learning materials (LEMA); teacher training (EMOL) and pre-primary education (PREP). With all these studies three kinds of databases were built up: organisations, bibliography and a specialists database. The first two can be found on our website. The last one is not yet available, but needs special mention in regard of privacy and permission of our correspondents, without whom we have not been able to develop all these studies.

After finishing these subsequent thematic studies, we continued with our inventory studies in a different way: establishing reports focussing on one language community in particular each time. These reports, called regional dossiers, focus on the position of minority and regional languages at all educational levels.
A challenge for us is to have direct contact with the field. There are many researches and experiments going on at the same time, but it is impossible to keep track of all the developments. One of our activities of this year will be to build up a network of good example minority schools around the EU, so that the schools themselves can exchange information directly.
The newest element in our joint co-operation with the other Mercator centers and Eblul is the idea for a common web portal, where you can find all information on regional and minority languages in the European Union for specialists, parents, children, policy makers, etc. Until now, such a portal does not exist and we are happy to let you know that it is on its way. It will help a lot to organise the scattered information from different sources. Through the portal, but also apart from it, you will be able to access Mercator-Education's own website for specific info on education: www.mercator-education.org. On our website you can download all our regional dossiers, search into our databases, look at our previous studies, etc.

Regional dossiers

This lecture is based on the information of the regional dossiers. Below is a list of 22 issues that we have published until now:

Basque; the Basque Language in Education in France

Basque; the Basque Language in Education in Spain

Breton; the Breton Language in Education in France

Catalan; the Catalan Language in Education in Spain

Cornish; the Cornish Language in Education in the UK

Corsican; the Corsican Language in Education in France

Croatian; the Croatian Language in Education in Austria

Frisian; the Frisian Language in Education in The Netherlands (3rd)

German; the German Language in Education in Alsace, France (2nd)

Galician; the Galician Language in Education in Spain

Gaelic; the Gaelic Language in Education in the UK

Irish; the Irish Language in Education in Northern Ireland

Irish; the Irish Language in Education in the Republic of Ireland

Ladin, the Ladin Language in Education in Italy

Meänkieli and Sweden Finnish; the Finnic Languages in Education in Sweden

North Frisian; the North Frisian Language in Education in Germany

Occitan; the Occitan Language in Education in France

Sami; the Sami Language in Education in Sweden

Slovenian; the Slovenian Language in Education in Austria

Sorbian, the Sorbian Language in Education in Germany

Swedish; the Swedish Language in Education in Finland

Welsh; the Welsh Language in Education in the UK

11. German (France)

At the moment two other dossiers are being prepared for publication: Scots in Scotland (UK) and German in South Tyrol (Italy). They are due to be published in May. The first dossier of our series was established in 1996. Our aim is to cover all the 45 language communities in the EU provided they are represented in the national educational system.

What can you find in these dossiers?

CONTENTS REGIONAL DOSSIERS

Foreword

1 Introduction
2 Pre-school education
3 Primary education
4 Secondary education
5 Vocational education
6 Higher education
7 Adult education
8 Educational research
9 Prospects
10 Summary of statistics

Education System in Scotland (UK)
References and further reading
Addresses
Other websites on minority languages
What can Mercator-Education offer you?

With the regional dossiers, Mercator-Education aims to provide concise, descriptive information and basic educational statistics about minority language education in a specific region of the European Union. Details about the features of the educational system, recent educational policies, divisions of responsibilities, main actors, legal arrangements, support structures, and qualitative information on a number of schools, teachers, pupils, and financial investments. Specifically, information is provided on preschool, primary, secondary, vocational, higher, and adult education, as well as a review of educational research, summary statistics, and overall prospects for the use of the language under study. This information is designed to serve the needs of policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, and journalists as they assess the developments in European minority language schooling. This information may also serve as a first orientation towards further research (additional readings are suggested and contact information provided).

The dossiers are written by our correspondents in the different language communities, who use our list of topics to make comparison possible. They are small reports, but there is a lot of work needed to search and gather all the necessary statistics and up-to-date information.

15 language communities

I have selected 15 language communities, subject of our most recent publications. The reports on these communities have all been compiled in 2000 and 2001.

1.Basque (Spain)

2.Catalan (Spain)

3.Cornish (UK)

4.Corsican (France)

5.Croatian (Austria)

6.Frisian (Netherlands)

7.Gaelic (UK)

8.Galician (Spain)

9.German (France)

10.Irish (Ireland)

11.Ladin (Italy)

12.Meänkieli and Sweden Finnish (Sweden)

13.Sami (Sweden)

14. Sorbian (Germany)

15.Welsh (UK)

Obviously, considering that there are 45 language communities and their situation is very diverse, 15 cases cannot be representative for the situation in the whole European Union.

1. In the first place, because the biggest language communities in this list are over-represented, since they have a much easier access to information and have most statistics. But it is an advantage to have these stronger language communities first in our series, as they can be an important examples for smaller communities. On the other hand, smaller language communities need to get better known, so our aim is to include bigger and smaller language communities in our series more or less to the same extent.

2. In the second place, it is almost impossible to present a representative picture for whole Europe, because every situation is unique and there is a lot of diversity. We try to reach at least some representation, as in the process of establishing the dossiers, apart from practical considerations, by including different parts of the EU.

In this list, the South of Europe is represented with the main regional languages in Spain. Unfortunately we have only covered the Ladin case from Italy, the country in the EU with the highest number of regional languages. We are in the process of extending our series with the Germans in South Tyrol. Hopefully the Slovene community and the French Francoprovençal in Aosta Valley will follow this year. Italy is going through a period of important reforms in the field of education and it is difficult to say how they are going to work out. From Austria we have covered the Croatians who are concentrated in Burgenland, where they have language rights. We have covered all the French regional languages, but these two are the most recent. Then going more towards the Western part of the EU, Germany. We are very glad to have the Sorbian community covered in our series, as they are a real endangered language, specifically the Lower Sorbian community. In my lecture I will sometimes distinguish between both, although in our series they appear in one publication. In our series we have included all the regional languages in the UK. Welsh, Cornish and Gaelic are the newest publications, while Scots is on its way and will be published in May. Irish in the Republic of Ireland is also a recent publication.

The North of Europe in this list is being represented by the Meänkieli, Sweden Finnish and the Sami, all of them in Sweden. The first two are put together in one publication. Unfortunately, we have not produced a dossier on the Sami in Norway, which would have been more logical as the main part of the Sami population lives there. We might consider doing it in the future, although Norway does not belong to the EU.

Anyway, I do not intend to present a representative picture, but my intention with this lecture is to examine the multifold developments going on in the field of education, trying to detect certain patterns. Therefore, I have chosen to take a closer look at 15 language communities.

15 language communities

Unfortunately we have to say that a general tendency is the decrease of the speakers in each language communities in the EU, while several of them are really endangered. This development I am not going to confirm with figures here. Instead I will only show the most recent figures of the minority and regional languages, as stated in the reports.

Catalan (Spain)	6 million
Galician (Spain)	1,9 million
Irish (Ireland)	1,43 million
Elsässer Ditsch (German,F)	960,000
Basque (Spain)	600,000
Welsh (UK)	about 1/2 million
Frisian (Netherlands)	340,000
Sweden-Finnish(Sweden)	250,000+15,000
Corsican (France)	170,000
Gaelic (UK)	70,000
Meänkieli (Sweden)	40,000
Upper Sorbs (German)	20,000
Ladin (Italy)	30,000
Croatian (Austria)	19,000
Sami (Sweden)	17,000
Lower Sorbs (Germany)	7,000
Cornish (UK)	300 speakers, 3000 learners
Size of language communities (Mercator-Education Regional Dossier Series, 2001-2002).

I am completely aware of the delicacy to state figures of language communities because of political reasons and also because of different sources. What is a Catalan e.g.? And do you have to be Frisian-speaking to be considered Frisian?

Some regions, like South Tyrol, have a census in which people can indicate to which language community they belong. An explample are the Ladins who live in South Tyrol together with the Germans. In public service the allocations of jobs is related to the percentage of the different language groups. A Ladin could think, like many Italians do, that if he declares himself German, his/her possibilities to compete for a job vacancy or for financial subventions etc. are higher. However, for well prepared/educated Ladins, the possibilities to find a good job might be higher if they declare themselves Ladins, since they are only a few.

In other countries these language figures are based on researches/census in which they ask people what their mothertongue is and what their abilities in the language are. The last is the case in my Frisian community and as far as I know also in Catalonia. People might state that they are able to speak, understand, write and read the language, but the actual level of language knowledge might differ from the level indicated.
Then there are language communities from which only estimates exist about their number, like the Sami and the Scots in Scotland. The geographical distribution complicates the calculation of the Sami population and in Scotland the language question has not been included in any national Census.

In general the education in the minority language is attended by people from the minority itself, but in several other cases, also not native speakers attend. Catalan is the most outspoken example, but also in Ireland non-Irish speaking children attend the Irish medium schools. It has been shown that his will not automatically lead to more speakers of the language.

Bilingual education
When we talk about regional and minority languages and education, we talk about bilingual education. The most important arguments in favour of bilingual education are threefold: juridical, promotional and pedagogical.

basic rights: education and mothertongue
basic for maintenance and vitality language
necessary for linguistic, emotional and cognitive development of children

Education is a basic right and so is the use of the mothertongue. That does not only count for the informal atmosphere, but also for the formal sectors.

In the second place, bilingual education is basic for the maintenance and the vitality of the language. Education is broader than schooling and extends to other sectors of society in which power relations in a major context and the status of the language play an important role. Bilingualism in family sphere and bilingual schooling can engender positive attitudes towards the minority language and their speakers. Family as well as school play a crucial role in passing on the language from generation to generation and so with the viability of the language. If a language is endangered and less parents pass it on to their children, school becomes an even more important part of policies for language maintenance. Moreover, with the official learning of the language at school, the child also learns that its language is worthwhile to use in formal sectors of society.

A last argument in favour of bilingual education has a pedagogical character. A first aspect related to pedagogy is the emotional development of children. It is important to provide children with the means to form their identity in their own local world which is an important reference to function in a globalising and multicultural society. I am not only talking about language, but also about emotional, cultural and social forming. A second pedagogical aspect has to do with the quality of language learning. If children do not have classes in their mothertongue at school, they obviously do not learn their language well. I myself am a striking example. I speak and write some foreign languages, but when I started to work at the Fryske Akademy where everything is done in Frisian, I could not write in my own mothertongue. I only had some extra curricular classes in Frisian as a subject during some years at primary school. Now it is a mandatory subject, but in practice this means having Frisian in general only 30-60 minutes a week. A direct result of this lack in education is that in our province where more than half the population is Frisian speaking, only 17% says that they can write in Frisian (which is an optimistic figure, taking into account that hardly anybody can write correctly and few people do it at a daily basis).

A last pedagogical element is the cognitive development of the children. I will give some more explanation to this part, using research results from Jim Cummins (1989).

Many people, including specialists, still have a negative view on bilingualism and bilingual education. But more recent studies show that the opposite is the case. According to Cummins, bilingualism can positively affect both intellectual and linguistic progress. He distinguishes the following three principles to clarify his statement.

1.The additive bilingual enrichment principle:
Bilingualism enriches the person in a linguistic, academic, intellectual and cultural way. While a child tries to learn two linguistic systems he can learn much more input of the language of a child that only learns one language and it has had more practice of analysing meanings. Moreover, students can add a second language to their repertoire of skills of no cost of the development of their first language.

2.The interdependence principle:
Learning a language means that you do not only learn the specific skills of a language, for example, Frisian, but you also develop a deeper conceptual of literacy in the majority language, in my case, Dutch. In other words, although the surface aspects (e.g. pronunciation, fluency, etc) of different languages are clearly separate, there is an underlying cognitive/academic proficiency which is common across languages. This common underlying proficiency makes possible the transfer of cognitive/academic or literacy-related skills across languages. Transfer is much more likely to occur from minority to majority language because of the greater exposure to literacy in the majority language outside of school and the strong social pressure to learn it. We can see several examples in Europe which confirm this, e.g. that Welsh students learn English reading faster when they can already read Welsh. In Ireland we can see the same pattern with Irish and with Basque in Spain.

3.The interactive pedagogy principle
Young children rarely focus on language itself in the process of acquisition; instead they focus on the meaning that is being communicated and they use language for a variety of functions, such as finding out about things, maintaining contact with others, etc. Children are active 'negotiators of meaning' and they acquire language almost as a by-product of this meaningful interaction with adults. This means that it is extremely important not to ignore the central function of language as meaningful communication in the classroom, in which both expressive and receptive aspects need to be focused on. With only drills and exercises the language is separated from its potential functions.
Apart from this extremely valuable information on the pedagogical value of language learning, these arguments show that there is a theoretical basis for at least some policy decisions regarding bilingual education. Policy makers can predict the probable effects of educational programmes for both majority and minority students implemented in very different sociopolicital contexts. And that is very relevant in the context of the language communities in the EU.

The major challenge regarding bilingualism is its quality. Bilingual education requires a lot of good conditions for an adequate functioning, in which the relation teacher-pupil is crucial (Baker,1989).

To study bilingual education in the 15 selected language communities, we need to know what is actually understood by bilingual education. It seems simple, when we talk about bilingualism, we talk about two languages. But the term does not say anything about the skills a person has in these two languages. Rarely he can read, write, listen and speak both languages at the same level. Normally he knows one better than the other. This means that bilingualism is a term which defines something, but leaves many questions unanswered. When we talk about bilingual education, the same thing happens. Bilingual education seems to be 50% of the instruction in one language and 50% of the other, but this does not say anything about the aim of this form of education and the abilities that are being emphasised in the learning process. So the use of the term bilingual education leaves many questions behind, as it does not say anything about what level of education, of how many hours it is taught, how many subjects, if all students are involved or just a part and what is the aim of it? So there are many types of bilingual education which makes it difficult to define the term in an adequate way.

Colin Baker (1998) distinguishes two basic aspects of bilingual education, which are useful for our study of the 15 language communities.

1. The first aspect is the objective of bilingual education. Bilingual education can be a means in the transition of the child from a minority language to the majority language. Another aim of bilingual education can be the development and maintenance of the mothertongue, what is obviously what we are interested in.

2. Another aspect is the distinction between teaching the language as a subject or using it as the language of instruction. It might be clear that using the language as instruction the impact on children's knowledge and linguistic skills is much bigger. This is sometimes referred to as the full bilingual model. Interesting examples of this we can find with the Catalans (Catalonia) and the Basques in Spain, Irish in Ireland, Fins in Sweden and Welsh in Wales. The mothertongue of the child is being protected and is developed next to the majority language.

To see how the provisions for bilingual education are arranged in the 15 cases we mentioned before, we turn to the next part of my lecture about legal provisions.

Legislation

I am going to take a look at the first two arguments that indicate the provisions of bilingual education: the juridical argument and the language promotion. The way these languages are protected and supported by the individual member state governments differs widely and has far-going consequences for the situation of the language itself. We can distinguish the following three points which are relevant in legislation on education:

1. Key levels decisions education

2. Language status in education

3.The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

1. Key levels decisions education

I have divided the key levels where decisions around education are taken in four groups.

Basque, Catalan and Galician are co-official languages and their language and education policies are almost entirely taken at the level of the Autonomous governments. According to the Irish Constitution, Irish is the first official language in the Republic of Ireland by virtue of its being the national language. Language and education policy is made at state level.

Then the second group of languages has some kind of autonomy, although all to a varying degree. In Wales, all language and education policy is arranged by the Welsh Language Board. The Welsh Language Act came into force in 1993, establishing the Welsh Language Board. It is a public body sponsored by the National Assembly for Wales. The government of Wales Act 1998 gave the National Assembly the power to do anything it considers appropriate to support the Welsh language. Then there is a Gaelic department which decides about Gaelic language and education issues, a Sami Parliament, a Corsican Territorial Authority with a special Corsican Language Charter. Decisions concerning Ladin place at different levels: autonomy of South Tirol-Trentino, the Province South Tirol and the different municipalities. The teaching of Ladin is organised from the office in Bolzano, from the same office as the Germans. You could say that the Ladins take advantage of the strong position of the German minority in South Tirol. But laws according to the Ladins are quite varied according to the province and valley. Decisions on Sorbian are taken at the level of the länder in Germany. Saxony as well as Brandenburg have special laws for the Sorbians language and education.

The decisions of the third group lie mostly with the central government, but there are special arrangements for a certain region where the minority is concentrated. This is true for Frisian in Friesland, German in Alsace and the Croatian in Burgenland, Austria. Minority rights for Croatians in Burgenland are recognised under article 7 of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, which is an integral part of the Austrian Constitution.

The last group consists of language communities whose position and provisions also depend on the central government, but the real protection of the regional and minority language is dependent on the local policies of municipalities and their political and administrative leaderships, such as boards of education. In Sweden there is a law of mothertongue instruction in 289 municipalities that constitute more than a certain percentage of the population. About 75 per cent of the 289 Swedish municipalities offer some type of mother tongue instruction. Finnish/Meänkieli is the largest minority language population, and has the greatest geographical diffusion. But these figures also apply to the Sami.

There have taken place several important changes in education in Sweden which may be interesting to highlight also in the context of language planning and decision levels (Lainio,2001).

1. Througout the 90s, decisions concerning the school were transferred from the central government to the municipal level and to individual schools as represented by their directors. The decentralisation put the real political power in the hands of the municipalities, which are largely ruled by non-professional politicians. This has clearly reduced the support for mothertongue instruction and for minority languages and has left an open conflict between the rhetoric of national political aims and local praxis.

2. On the other hand, there was the soc-called 'free school reform', for independent schools. So Parents, teachers, organisations, foundations and companies could found their own schools, with their own teaching, content profile, or type of administration. With approval it receives grants from the municipality. These bilingual schools have become the backbone of mothertongue instruction, at the same rate as the withdrawal of municipal mother tongue/bilingual/home language classes has proceeded. But independent schools exist in far fewer municipalities than did the public bilingual municipal classes (Lainio,2001).

2. Language status in education

In several communities, education was the first sector in which language provisions appeared. In several countries, initiatives for mothertongue instruction were taken in the first half of the 20th century.

All 15 language communities, except for Cornish, have provisions for language education at present. We might therefore propose that they obtain means to carry out their language policies in education, even if it is not enough in many cases. With this subject I am not talking about practice, but about legal arrangements. That theory is not the same as practice is, among others, shown by the situation in our Frisian community and in the Galician community.

Most of the 15 language communities have good provisions for their language in education, although the scale and the degree of these provisions in the same category are highly varied.

Ladin I have put in the group of some and good provisions as the situation in the valleys are so different. In South Tirol they have relatively good provisions, but in Trent and Belum the provisions for language education are scarce. The status of Sami nor Lower Sorbian is definitely not satisfactory in education, but very recent developments are showing some improvements (Svonni:2000; Hemminga:2001).

We can see that all language communities where the main level of decision on education is taken at the autonomous community level, are in the category where many provisions are in education for the regional or minority language.

For Cornish there are no provisions at all and therefore no means. All the work is done by volunteers.

3. European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages

There are 8 countries in the European Union that have ratified the Charter until now. They have all done that in recent years.

Spain was one of the latest to ratify and has done that with a special clausule. Instead of referring to particular languages, Spain has ratified for regional or minority languages that are co-official languages in the autonomous communities and the languages that are protected by the statuses of autonomy in the territories where they are traditionally spoken. No names of the languages are mentioned. I do not need to tell you that languages is a very political issue in Spain and apart from the big language groups there are several smaller ones.

The United Kingkom also ratified in 2001, but has excluded Cornish from this ratification.

One of the first countries to sign was the Netherlands, together with Luxemburg. Luxemburg has still not ratified, while the Netherlands ratified only 6 years later.

France has also signed, but still not ratified and it not likely that it will. France considers ratification incompatible with its Constitution as it means granting collective rights to a group of speakers. But it has signed to promote the European language heritage. In Italy things have slowed down with the government change. A main education reform is taking place at the moment. Belgium, Greece, Ireland and Portugal have not signed.

For the 15 cases treated here that means that Irish, Corsican, German, Ladin and Cornish do not have anything to do with the Charter. All the other 10 languages have been ratified in part III of the Charter. That means that they are not only recognised, but the government has also guaranteed measures to actively contribute the protection and promotion of the languages. These measures can be chosen from a very low degree until a high degree of commitment. Relevant in this context is education. A deeper research on the commitment of the different governments concerning education is needed, but here I can at least roughly indicate what degree the measures have.

Measures have been ratified for all language communities and for all levels of education. But to very different degrees. It is difficult to say whether something is low, medium or high, but I tried to do it even so, to be able to present some kind of picture.

Article 8 (III) deals with several levels of education in two paragraphs: § 1 refers to all the school levels: (a) pre-school, (b) primary, (c) secondary, (d) technical and vocational, (e) university and (f) adult education. For every one of these levels, different options are presented according to the situation of each regional and minority language. (g) history and culture, (h) training teachers, (i) setting up of supervisory body. § 2 is signed when the language rights are also recognised outside the traditional territory where the language is spoken. The language groups with most autonomy obtained also ratification with the highest measures in education. Remarkable is the §2 in the regional languages in Spain. Everything is strictly limited to the autonomous communities, while there are Galician speakers concentrated in other parts of Spain, e.g. The smallest communities have also the lowest measures ratified. Five of the language communities have high measures, against two medium and five low measures (separating Meankieli/Sweden Finnish and Upper/Lower Sorbian). Curriculum

The following part of my presentation is about curriculum. Is the language given as a subject or as a medium of instruction? How is the curriculum organised in the 15 language communities?

1. Language as a subject

The first group refers to all children in the area, also to children who are not speaking the minority language. For all Basque, Catalan, Galician, Welsh and Frisian children there are provisions for learning these languages as a full subject. It is part of the core curriculum. All these languages are also taught as medium of instruction, but there is a part of the children that only receives the language as a subject. I have doubted where to put Gaelic, as there are also several non-speaking Gaelic children who receive Gaelic medium education and have it as a subject. But even so, we are speaking of very limited regions.

If I give you the example of Frisian which is a mandatory subject in the whole province, we see that in practice not all children have access to Frisian classes and the quality is very diverse. In our country we have freedom of curriculum which means that schools are free to make up the curriculum. So it is only target based. The target for Frisian is the same for Dutch at the schools: full dominance. This obviously does not make any sense, when we take the figures of teaching de facto, which is 30-60 minutes a week of Frisian. And children do not learn enough Frisian at school to maintain the language. As there is freedom of education, schools tend to pay little attention to Frisian since it has a low status and is not seen by parents as necessary 'luggage' in their children's career.

Main part of the Corsican, German (in Alsace), Ladin (South Tirol) and Gaelic children receive classes of their language as a subject. In Corsica much is left to the schools also and it is not always existent. Therefore, it is stated in our Corsican report that 83% of the students is "in contact" with Corsican, whatever that may be. Another 12% of the students receive initiation classes for 3 hours a week.

Less than half of the children of the Meänkieli, Sweden Fins, Sorbian, Sami, Ladin (in the other provinces) and Croatian communities receive instruction in their language. As for the Croatian children outside Burgenland (11,000) there are no collective rights. The Sami children receive it only at Sami Schools in some northern municipalities. At the municipal compulsory schools, Sami is only an optional subject, which we will see in the next table.

Optional subject in curriculum	Optional subject extra curricular
Croatian Ladin (Trent) Sami	Cornish Lower Sorbian Ladin (Belum)

At 4 schools in Burgenland children receive Croatian as an optional subject. Ladin is given as an optional subject in the curriculum in Trent and outside the curriculum in Belum.

As there are no means for Cornish, it is completely outside the curriculum and so are parts of Lower Sorbian. In principal, all schools in Brandenburg in the Sorbian area have the possibility to organise Sorbian classes if parents wish so.

All in all we can conclude that in 10 of the 15 language communities children have their mothertongue on the curriculum as a subject. In 6 of the 15 communities also children who are not native speakers receive this instruction. In 3 communities the language is present in the curriculum, but as an optional subject. In one of these this is only true for part of the area, while in another part the language is only present as optional subject outside the curriculum. This is also the situation in 2 other language communities.

2. Medium of instruction

Crucial in bilingual education is the language as medium of instruction. When we take a look at the use of the language as such in the 15 communities, we can see three different categories:

· Monolingual minority schools;

· Bilingual schools;

· Bilingual schools, language as instruction.

Monolingual minority schools

Catalan (81,5%) Basque (45%) Welsh (25%) Irish (6%) Gaelic (3%)

It is not surprising to see Catalan, Basque and Welsh represented in the group of monolingual minority schools. Decree (75/1992) established Catalan as the normal language of instruction in compulsory education, starting with the first levels.

Ireland and Scotland have respectively concentrated Irish and Gaelic speaking areas and their percentage is therefore much lower.

Education through the medium of Gaelic is available in 60 of the 2345 primary schools in Scotland. 49 of these schools are located in the Highlands and Islands, with the rest situated in cities and towns in the Lowlands. With the exception of the dedicated Gaelic- medium school in Glasgow and 5 designated Gaelic- medium schools in The Outer Hebrides, Gaelic-medium streams and units form part of local mainly English- medium schools (Robertson,2002).

Bilingual schools 50-50

Basque (23%) Catalan (18%) German (2,7%) Irish

This is the so-called full bilingual model. Both languages are taught to the same extent, although in different ways and with different emphasis. In the Basque country it is one of the 4 education models and is followed by almost a quarter of all the school-going children at primary level. In Catalonia it makes up the rest of the children. A very small percentage of pupils has only Spanish as a language of instruction. Then in the Republic of Ireland, there are no percentages, but I can indicate that there is a current tendency to move from monolingual Irish schools to bilingual schools. So bilingual schools are growing, while monolingual schools are decreasing.

The German case in Alsace (France) is worth mentioning. A few years ago the Rectorat introduced a full bilingual model in which children over 3 years receive 50% of the classes in French and the other 50% in German. The model of one class one teacher is being employed. 2,7% of children in Alsace are included in this kind of schooling. French is used in history, geometry and French, while mathematics, sciences and German are taught in German. Literacy training is generally first completed in French before switching to reading competence in German. As a rule, children learn to read in German and in French almost simultaneously (van der Schaaf & Morgen,2001).

The biggest group consists of language communities with bilingual schools where the minority language is being used as medium of instruction, but only some hours a week. These are called bilingual schools, but are not fully bilingual. The language is mostly taught some hours a week.

Bilingual schools, minority instruction language

Basque (21%) Croatian (12%) Corsican (5%) Frisian, Irish, Gaelic, Ladin, Sami, Meänkieli/Sweden Finnish, Upper Sorbian.

More than 1/5 of the Basque children go to a school where they receive more Spanish than Basque.

In Burgenland, there are 29 schools, with 1404 pupils (12%) involved in bilingual education.

In France 5% of the Corsican children are involved in bilingual courses with more than 3 hours.

The Frisian figure is based on an inspection report and they included all degrees of communication in Frisian and also informal communication. So, it does not say much this 58%.

All the other language communities have bilingual schools with the minority language as medium of instruction for some hours, but we do not know exactly to what extent. The Meänkieli and Sweden Finnish case is worth mentioning specifically, because they have 7 types of mother tongue provision and two variants, the class based and the hour based instruction. An explanation of these types would go too far for this paper, but you can consult the regional dossier on these language communities by Jarmo Lainio (2001).

Conclusions

Much has happened in the last 5 years in the area of regional languages and bilingual education. It is a dynamic area in which many developments are taking place. Bilingual education is not only necessary for maintaining the language, but also for the emotional, cognitive and linguistic development of children.

In this paper I have analyzed two aspects of bilingual education: legal provisions and curriculum. Although there is much diversity throughout the European language communities, some patterns can be observed.

As far as legal provisions are concerned, most provisions are found where language and education policies are made at the level of autonomous communities or state level. This is not the case for the majority of the 15 language communities. Most of them have reasonable provisions, which does not mean that their practice is similar. Twelve languages are included in the ratifications of the European Charter, with different measures for education. Research is needed to see how far-going these measures are in the context of their own national education systems and in the comparison with other language communities.

The analysis of the curriculum shows that most communities have their language on the curriculum only as a subject. When it is present on the curriculum as a language of instruction, in most cases it covers much less than 50% of the instruction language. Fortunately some other language communities present a quite more positive picture.

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