The Czech Republic takes over the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 19 May.  Among the nine designated  priorities of the 6 month chairmanship is  the  promotion of human rights education and linguistic skills.

 
“The Czech Republic continuously develops and improves tools for linguistic and cultural inclusion in Czech schools to help them deal with the increasing number of pupils whose mother tongue differs from the language of instruction. In this connection, the Czech Chairmanship will actively co-operate with the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe (ECML) on promoting teachers’ and other language professionals’ capacities to develop linguistic skills and intercultural competences of learners, as a prerequisite for their successful education. In the framework of the ECML’s four-year programme 2016-2019, this co-operation will involve the preparation and organisation of mediation skills, as well as the dissemination of the results of projects focused on the work in multilingual classrooms and the establishment of European standards specifying proficiency levels of sign languages. Cooperation will proceed through the membership of the Czech representative in the ECML Governing Board and through the involvement of Czech experts in the project teams and networks.”

See full list of priorities of the Czech chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe: CM/Inf(2017)12