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"