Local organiser: Lília Vicente, Ministry of Education Portugal

ECML experts: Mercè Bernaus, Spain; Katja Schnitzer, Germany

Participants: 26 (school principals, school administrators / leaders / school advisers, policymakers)

"The Directorate General for School Administration, as the promoter of continuous training for school cluster directors, and through its Team for Interdisciplinary Projects and Training, organised a workshop on 10 and 11 November in Lisbon on the theme "Developing language-aware schools”.

The Supporting Multilingual Classrooms event, part of a cooperation agreement between the ECML and the European Commission, has the objective of helping the Member States to guarantee access to quality education for migrant and refugee pupils and to close the performance gap between migrant and national pupils, was led by trainers from the Centre.

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, due to migration issues, we are witnessing differentiated and increasingly intense waves of migration throughout Europe. In Portugal, particularly in some regions, school clusters are confronted with a population with an increasing cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, so their principals should be given access to other strategies and approaches that enable them to meet the challenges posed by these new educational contexts."

Lília Vicente, local organiser, 1 December 2022

ECML project website: RELANG – EU-ECML cooperation agreement 2022 "Innovative methodologies and assessment in language learning"