El programa bilingüe de la Comunidad de Madridun estudio en la etapa de Educación Primaria

Abstract

It is now recognized that education in respect for the cultural and linguistic diversity of its citizens plays a major role in tackling the socio-economic, demographic, environmental and technological challenges that Spain will face in the years to come. The Community of Madrid, aware of this social perception, has been carrying out a program of structural reforms and curricular design since 2002, which, in accordance with the guidelines established by the European Union, bring it closer to the objective proposed by the European Council of Lisbon of the year 2000: "to become the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010 capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion and respect for the environment"2, and to turn the Community of Madrid, as agreed at the Barcelona European Council in 2002, into a world-class benchmark in education and training. Owing to this reformist idea, and to improve the quality, efficiency and efficiency of education and training systems, in 2004 the Bilingual Schools Program of the Community of Madrid was created to promote multilingualism, muiticulturalism and lifelong learning in schools dependent on their management. Ten years after its founding, the time has come to review the situation of education in this Community, and undertake, in this sense, studies aimed to evaluate the results achieved. To this end, this novel study aims to analyze if the linguistic competence achieved by the students who finish the first cycle of the Primary Education is equivalent, as provided by Order 5958/2010, which regulates bilingual public schools of the Community of Madrid, at level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. To carry out this task, we have designed a descriptive, observational and transversal study, in which the research methodology used has been mixed, qualitative and quantitative, using as an instrument of data collection an individual, printed, multivariate and structured questionnaire, constituted by dichotomous and nominal-polyatomic questions and with closed answers. The questionnaire has been elaborated based on the contents that the Community of Madrid establishes like target in the Foreign Language Subject: English, in the section "Language children are exposed to", and in the subsections "Grammar" and "Vocabulary-themes", for the students who finish the second course of the Primary Education Stage. The resuits of the study show that, indeed, students who finish the first cycle of Primary Education reach, as provided by Order 5958/2010 of the Community of Madrid, a level of linguistic competence equivalent to level A1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. As possible future lines of research, we propose to address issues related to the training and educational needs of teachers; the role of students with special educational needs in bilingual education; the influence of the family environment on the selection of students from bilingual centers; the impact of bilingual education on Spanish language competence, and the influence of bilingual education on the achievement of the objectives of other subjects. 1 Presidency Conclusion, Lisbon European Council 23 and 24 March 2000, SN (2000) 100, p. 2