PLURILINGUALISM PROMOTION PLAN

The main pillars of the Plurilingualism Plan are to improve the language skills of the Andalusian population in their mother tongue and, at the same time, to provide them with plurilingual and pluricultural skills.

As far as Andalusian school pupils are concerned, the objective is to achieve plurilingual and pluricultural skills, sequencing the contents of each stage of schooling and adapting assessment criteria to those established in the Common European Framework of reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assesment as mentioned above. In fact, in some of the existing Bilingual Sections, the levels described in the Framework have already been used to adapt the curriculum and lay down the assessment critetia. To do this, the school must create a need among the pupils to used the foreign language in order to communicate, and to use it in the most realistic context possible, in such a way that it allows them to become aware that it is a valid instrument which can help them to discover and structure their vision of the world.

With the objective of improving the language skills of Andalusian school pupils, measures are to be tajen to bring foward the teaching of the first feoreign language to Infant and Primary schools. There will also be a progressive flexibilisation of school timetables in order to make it possible fos Secondary School pupils to receive foreign language every school day.

Likewise, there must be attention to the diversity of our pupils, since this is the prime mechanism for adjustment of the pedagogical offer to the capacities, interests and needs of the pupils who require it and since it can correct inequalities in the conditions of access to language learning. From this perspective, attention to diversity is seen as an imperative of socal justice for democratic schooling and it is necessary to adapt the curriculum to different individual situations in order to make it accessible to all pupils. This is not only for ethical reasons, which are important, but also for reasons of efficiency in the teaching/learning process. In this sense, adaptations of the curriculum are made for pupils with especial educational needs, especially in Bilingual Schools.

The launch of Secondary Education distance learning for persons with disabilities offers the opportunity to bring plurilingual education to adult learners and learners with special needs. The obvious social function of secondary education through distance learning is by the Andalusian Plan for Attention to Immigrant Pupils and is reinforced through attention to pupils with disabilities.

Persons with disabilities can access this hihgly enriching form of education, which contributes to their integration, while immigrant pupils have the opportunity to recycle their foreign language skills and continue developing their communicative skills, at a time when these competences are very important to their education. If they are able to use their mother tongue in the classroom in some subjects, they progress more quickly, value their mother tongue as an essential part of their education and feel satisfaction at seeing how their language is recognised as a valid educational instrument in the host society.

There will also be more exchange visits by Andalusian school students.

In this field, the Language and Youth Programme will be further promoted by increasing the number of students participating.

We should also mention the European Union programmes, suchas Socrates in the field of Primary and Secondary Education and Leonardo da Vinci in Professional Training, which involve European educational proyects which bring together Andalusian with schools in other European countries.

Teachers are the main actors in the implementation of the Plan, and the Regional Ministry of Education considers thet it is a priority for Andalusian teachers to receive appropiate language training. With the objective in mind, training activities are to be orgnised for teachers, which may be classroom or distance training with global or partial linguisic objectives, depending on the needs detected. Diferent institutions will be responsible for the training, including the Official Languge School, Teacher Training Centres and difnt Spanich and foreign training organisations.

In order to complete the training of the teachers, there will be visits abroad, organised by the Ministry of Education through the European programmes and "job for job" exchanges. The objective of improving language skills among Andalusian society as a whole is a commitment of the Regional Government that is based on the plurilingual, pluricultural character of our Autonomous Community.

We should also underline the need to design the new language curricula. These new curricula are based on the principle that people do not have differentiated, separate communication skills depending on the language that they know. In this sense, the new curricula will be integrated and adapted to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

The integrated curriculum will focus on the pupil, who is at the core of the teaching /learning process and is the person responsible for this process, as an individual who communicates and developes his or her own learning stategies, and therefore learns to learn, as a social being whose integration must be facilitated and as a person who is developing and reaffirming his or hers personality.

Finally, lines of research will be opened up in order to experiment and implement the European Language Portfolio in the whole educational sphere.