Setback to classes in three languages

PALMA
THE Balearic Parliament rejected a proposal by the Partido Popular (PP), calling on the government to apply the trilingual project (with equal amounts of time spent on classes given in Spanish, Catalan and English) at the more than 40 schools which had requested permission to introduce it in the current school year.

The new left wing coalition government decided to suspend the project last September, although it agreed to allow those schools which had already introduced it to continue as an experimental measure.

As part of its proposal, the PP asked Parliament to give priority to “the application, maintenance and development of the plan for choice of language in primary education, which is based on the law of language normalisation and the Spanish Constitution.” Presenting the motion, PP member of parliament Francesc Fiol defended the right of parents, recognised in the Spanish Constitution, to have their children learn to read and write in Spanish as their first language. (Spanish and Catalan are co-official in the Balearics).

The PP also wants the government to present a plan for the progressive introduction of tri-lingual polices within three months.
In rejecting the proposal, Rosa Maria Alberdi of the Balearic Socialist Party (PSIB) said that her party was always “in agreement” that people should have new and wider possibilities of choice, but accused the PP of playing party politics with language teaching.

She said that the education ministry would continue to work for the development of the law on the normalisation of language.
Esperanza Mari, member of parliament for the socialist party-Ibiza for Change, claimed that the tri-lingualism project had met with “fierce opposition” from the school community and authorities connected with the world of language, and she also brought up the subject of European Union legislation which protects the teaching of “minority languages.” When the PP introduced the trilingual policy during the last legislature, proponents of a wider use of Catalan objected that the time taken up with teaching classes in English would reduce the time devoted to Catalan.

When the coalition left-wing government took over, it claimed that it was unfair as not all schools had the staff qualified to teach in English. It said at the time that it was prepared to introduce the teaching of a third language at an early age, but only when it would be possible to do so in all schools, in order not to give some children an unfair advantage.