More schools offering total language immersion

10 August 2006

BRUSSELS — Starting from 1 September, some 98 primary and 53 secondary schools in the French-speaking community in Belgium will offer students total language immersion.

This means that students will be able to choose for a complete or partial study programme in a language other than French, newspaper ‘La Libre Belgique’ reported on Thursday.

In the majority of schools, the other language will be Dutch (77 primary schools and 38 secondary schools).

English is the next most important language and a small minority of schools will offer total immersion in German.

The language immersion system was introduced into Francophone primary schools in 1999, when nine schools started staging lessons in other languages.

In the secondary school system, the scheme started two years ago with 11 schools. Subjects such as geography and history are taught in another language as part of the total immersion scheme.

The total immersion scheme does not exist in the Flemish education system. A special ‘language education’ commission is currently studying the pros and cons of the project.

Subject: Belgian news