Education provides financial incentives to schools that promote Catalan

Some 500 schools shared good practices this afternoon at La Farga de l'Hospitalet de Llobregat to encourage the use of Catalan in schools.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
28 March 2023 Tuesday 10:46
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Education provides financial incentives to schools that promote Catalan

Some 500 schools shared good practices this afternoon at La Farga de l'Hospitalet de Llobregat to encourage the use of Catalan in schools. The Department of Education pays 1,300 euros a year to the center that carries out specific activities.

This is one of the measures included in the plan of 100 transversal actions to promote Catalan that was presented by President Pere Aragonès in November and that includes the educational field. This is a plan to make citizens aware of the need to care for the language in all spaces and aims to open "a new stage" in language policy.

The Catalan acceleration program in schools began as a pilot last year in 200 centers, to which 300 more were added at the beginning of September. There are currently 800 schools that have committed to implementing concrete actions to promote the use of Catalan by teachers and students. The objective is that in the 2026-2027 academic year all the educational centers are already involved.

The implementation will take place in two rhythms, as announced today by Educació, one intensive and another to promote the use of the language under the umbrella Activem-nos pel català.

The participants in this network will make an x-ray of the linguistic uses of the center from a diagnostic tool and will commit themselves to achieve some specific objectives.

Among the actions aimed at promoting the colloquial use of Catalan among students, which has decreased due to participation in social networks where Spanish or English is mostly spoken, academic practices in the classroom stand out as production activities that encourage sporadic conversation in this language. For example, production of podcasts, documentaries, fake news workshops and debates in Catalan. Also music production in different modalities such as rap or rumba.

Likewise, within the basic skills tests in schools, orality will be evaluated to guarantee that all centers have data on the use of the oral language of their students and Educació can draw up a map of the entire educational system.

In the playground, the educational centers that are part of this program have proposed game activities in which the use of Catalan is indirectly encouraged.

It is also contemplated to reinforce the dining room space. In this sense, the Ministry wants to include a clause in the contracts of leisure companies whereby they commit to making Catalan the language of use in their activities.

Regarding teachers, the greatest difficulty, according to Education sources, is maintaining Catalan with the student.

The use of Catalan by teachers to students has dropped from 73% to 50% as a general average in the system. To avoid changing the language, linguistic assertiveness workshops and conversation resources have been deployed.

Educació, which has analyzed 300 actions from these centers, has concluded that just having a space for reflection in the center on the use of the language helps teachers to become aware and change their habits. And that the step prior to carrying out the action "costs" but carrying it out "is easier", according to department sources.

Since the plan was launched, the offer of places to take the C2 training course has multiplied by ten, from 400 to 4,500.

The Ministry has announced that it is preparing a decree on the use of Catalan, which displays title 2 of the Education Law (LEC) that requires teachers to have this level. The legal article has not been applied because it was appealed in the courts, but a 2019 ruling ratifies the power of the Generalitat to demand its compliance.

However, Educació contemplates making it compulsory progressively to give active teachers time to train. For those who enter the system for the first time, the title will be required from the year 2024.

The number of people enrolled in C2 courses has increased tenfold, from 4,000 to 14,000 in one year. The exam to obtain the higher level certificate in Catalan will be held on April 22.

Likewise, the Government is working to introduce linguistic practices in the curriculum of the degrees of Early Childhood and Primary Education.

On the other hand, the Government has approved today the creation of the initial teacher residency program in Sensei educational centers, which it had already announced last January.

The program will start on a pilot basis in the next two courses and will allow teachers who have just graduated to spend a course in a selected center accompanied by a mentor.

This course will select 60 centers that will offer this experience from the next course, when up to 250 teachers from the stock market with less than three months of experience -150 in primary and 100 in secondary- will be able to accommodate. 85 mentor teachers will be trained. The selection of young teachers, centers and mentors will be carried out through a public call