The Basque country is currently facing an important challenge: the transition from bilingual education to multilingualism. Previous learnings from the development of the bilingual education system, which started in the 1960’s, will prove useful to build a new framework for the introduction of foreign language learning while ensuring that Basque, a minority language, is maintained and its situation improved.
This document sums up the evolution of bilingual education in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), briefly mentions the main resources that the Basque Government offers in order to support the system, summarises the projects and plans for multilingual education that have emerged in the last years, and outlines the main findings of research conducted on the subject.
2. Bilingual education and its evolution
Compulsory education in the BAC is divided into primary education (ages 6 to 12) and secondary education (ages 12 to 16). The early years stage (ages 2 to 6) is not compulsory, although most children attend school or nurseries at those ages. Further education (ages 16 to 18) is offered too. There are state-funded schools and fee-paying private schools in the BAC, and each account for approximately 50% of the total amount of students (Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, p. 7).
In the 1960’s, during Franco’s regime, several private schools (“ikastolak”) were the starting point of Basque education. Although they were not recognised as official schools at first, their development forced the dictatorial regime to accept them. With the return of democracy, in 1979 Basque gained the official language status in the BAC, together with Spanish (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 34; Elorza, 2013, pp. 2–3; Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 56–57; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 7–8).
The Law for the Standardisation of the Use of Basque (1982) and its development through the Decree for Education (1983) set that both Basque and Spanish would be compulsory units in all schools in order to guarantee the possibility of having acquired both at the end of compulsory education, and established three schooling models (A, B and D) from which families could choose. The A model is a Spanish-medium model where Basque is taught as a second language for 3 to 5 hours a week, in the B model each of the two languages is used during approximately half of the school time, and in the D model Basque is the language of instruction and Spanish is taught as a subject for 3 to 5 hours a week (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, pp. 34–35; Elorza, 2013, pp. 5–6; Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 58–59; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 8–9).
The 1983 Decree ceased to be in effect after the 1993 Basque Schooling Law was passed, which maintained the three models and gave the “ikastolak” the chance to either integrate into the public education system or in the private sector (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, p. 59).
The D model has increasingly been chosen by families since the bilingual models were established, growing from 25% in the eighties to 80-90% nowadays (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 35; Elorza, 2013, p. 13; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 10–11). This has resulted in a considerable increase in the number of bilinguals in the BAC, growing from 528 521 in 1991 to 714 136 in 2001 (Elorza, 2013, p. 16).
The bilingual education system had to face several challenges from the beginning (Gorter, Zenotz, Etxague, & Cenoz, 2014, pp. 210–211; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 11–16), such as improving teachers’ proficiency in Basque, developing materials in Basque or the standardisation of Basque. Although a great deal has been done in those fields, the improvement of the use of the language and its quality remain as important goals still to be reached (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 65–69). There is also growing debate on the adequacy of the three bilingual models in the light of the evolution that has been outlined here and new challenges brought by the introduction of a third (or fourth) language in schools (Gorter et al., 2014, pp. 211–214; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 16–19) due to the spread of English as a lingua franca (Jessner & Cenoz, 2007, pp. 156–157).
3. Services and resources offered by the Basque Government
Regarding material resources, besides developing school facilities, the Basque Government has given support to develop terminology (standardisation of Basque), offered grants to teachers so they could produce materials, subsidised the printing and translating costs (EIMA), controlled the quality of materials, catalogued them and awarded best practices (Elorza, 2013, pp. 7–11; Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, p. 59).
The improvement of teachers’ proficiency in Basque has been achieved through training programmes (IRALE) where teachers could benefit from a full-time paid leave in order to improve their linguistic skills. Those schools that chose to also received training and support to evolve from the A model to the D model (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 59–60).
The Basque Government also issues guidelines regarding pedagogical, curricular and organisational aspects such as grouping children according to their language skills in Basque and Spanish, the choice of subjects to be taught in each language in the B model, as well as appropriate teaching methodologies (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 61–63). Teachers at state-funded schools have access to training programmes (PREST GARA) and receive support from regional centres (BERRITZEGUNEAK) in order to improve their teaching skills (Elorza, 2013, pp. 7–10), whereas fee-paying private schools have their own consultants (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 41).
There are also programmes to promote the use of Basque (NOLEGA) and the Basque Institute for Research and Assessment in Education (ISEI-IVEI) is involved in the development and monitoring of the Basque education system (Elorza, 2013, p. 7).
4. Current projects and plans for multilingual education
The bilingual education system set up in the eighties has evolved into a multilingual system at the beginning of the 21st century. Three main trends have been identified in terms of the improvement of the use of English in the curriculum (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 36): early learning in pre-primary, the use of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, and the use of English as an additional language of instruction.
State-funded schools and private fee-paying schools have developed several projects and plans which follow the three main trends mentioned above. Basque-medium private schools, “ikastolak”, developed the Eleanitz project; Christian private schools, “kristau eskola”, developed the Aniztu programme, and the Basque Government established a trilingual education framework (HMH-MET) which was recently changed into the Heziberri 2020 framework.
Eleanitz is the multilingual school model for “ikastolak”. It introduced English as L3 at the age of four within a global strategy (School Language Project) for the development of languages during compulsory education, based on a communicative approach to language learning and a CLIL perspective (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, pp. 87–89). Therefore, and integrated curriculum is designed for all languages to be learned at school, taking into account that both common general skills as well as skills for specific languages will need to be acquired (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, pp. 91–92). Basque is regarded as the main language in school and sociocultural factors are taken into account to give a different weight to each language (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, pp. 92–93).
Aniztu has mainly focused on teacher training in order to develop their linguistic skills in English and the Teaching Assistant in the Basque Country (TABC) programme, which introduces native English speakers in the classrooms to provide high quality input (‘Kristau Eskola. Pedagogia proiektua’, n.d.).
State-funded schools had a multilingual programme before the academic year 2010-2011, with early English learning starting at age 4 (INGLEGOIZ) using DIP, DIP, DIP materials (‘Foreign language teaching in the Basque Schools’, n.d.), and a CLIL approach in primary (INEBI) and secondary (BHINEBI) education (Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2011, pp. 13–15; Vázquez, 2012). This eventually led to the trilingual education experimental process established in 2010-2011 (Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2011), which has recently been changed into the Heziberri 2020 framework (Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2014).
5. Results of multilingual experimental programmes
On general terms, there is increasing evidence supporting that bilingualism has a positive effect on third language acquisition and that the introduction of English has no negative effects on the development of Basque, Spanish and content learning (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, pp. 42–43; Jessner & Cenoz, 2007, pp. 162–164).
Moreover, Basque proficiency is significantly higher among those students in the D model, whereas the language of instruction has no significant effect on the proficiency in Spanish. D model students also score higher on English than students in the A or B models (Gorter et al., 2014, pp. 214–216).
Experimental results of the Eleanitz project have shown no significant differences among students who had undergone the project and others who had not, regarding their skills in Basque and Spanish, as well as their cognitive development (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, p. 93; Lasagabaster Herrarte, 2011, p. 96). Research outcomes also suggest that early exposure to English also has a positive impact on English proficiency (Lasagabaster Herrarte, 2011, pp. 96–97).
6. References
Cenoz, J., & Etxague, X. (2011). Third language learning and trilingual education in the Basque Country. In S. Björklund & I. Bangma, Trilingual primary education in Europe: some developments with regard to the provisions of trilingual primary education in minority language communities of the European Union (pp. 32–44). Ljouwert/Leeuwarden; Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy ; Mercator Education.
Elorza, I. (2013). The Basque education system.
Elorza, I., & Muñoa, I. (2008). Promoting the Minority Language Through Integrated Plurilingual Language Planning: The Case of the Ikastolas. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 21(1), 85–101. doi:10.2167/lcc345.0
Eusko Jaurlaritza. (2011). Hezkuntza marko hirueledunaren esperimentazio prozesua. Dokumentu markoa 2010-11. Retrieved from http://www.hezkuntza.ejgv.euskadi.net/r43-2459/es/contenidos/informacion/dig_publicaciones_innovacion/es_dig_publ/adjuntos/19_hizkuntzak_500/500013e_Pub_EJ_experimentacion_MET_e.pdf
Eusko Jaurlaritza. (2014). Heziberri 2020. Hezkuntza-eredu pedagogikoaren markoa.
Foreign language teaching in the Basque Schools. (n.d.).
Gardner, N., & Zalbide, M. (2005). Basque acquisition planning. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2005(174), 55–72. doi:10.1515/ijsl.2005.2005.174.55
Gorter, D., Zenotz, V., Etxague, X., & Cenoz, J. (2014). Multilingualism and European Minority Languages: The Case of Basque. In D. Gorter, V. Zenotz, & J. Cenoz (Eds.), Minority Languages and Multilingual Education (pp. 201–220). Springer Netherlands. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-7317-2_12
Jessner, U., & Cenoz, J. (2007). Teaching English as a Third Language. In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), International Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 155–167). Springer US. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-46301-8_12
Kristau Eskola. Pedagogia proiektua. (n.d.).
Lasagabaster Herrarte, D. (2011). Basque as a Minority Language and English as a Foreign Language: are they Complementary Languages in the Basque Educational System? Annales-Anali Za Istrske in Mediteranske Studije, 21(1), 93–100.
Vázquez, M. D. (2012). Multilingual education in the Basque Country. A step towards CLIL?.
Zalbide, M., & Cenoz, J. (2008). Bilingual Education in the Basque Autonomous Community: Achievements and Challenges. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 21(1), 5–20. doi:10.2167/lcc339.0
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