A group of experts from several different disciplines- education, sociology, Catalan philology, evolutive psychology, language policy and bilingualism- will take part in a debate to discuss the current sociolinguistic situation of secondary education students in Catalonia. The event will take place next Friday, the 5th of June, from 9.30 to 14 h at the Antoni Caparrós Auditorium at the Barcelona Science Park (Baldiri Reixac, 4). The objective of this gathering is to define the challenges and actions that ought to be carried out in order to improve some aspects of the current reality.

The gathering, entitled “Sociolinguistic situation in Secondary Education: challenges and action lines”, has been jointly organised by the Sociolinguistics and Communication University Centre of the University of Barcelona (CUSC-UB) – based at PCB–, the Higher Council for the Assessment of the Education System of the Department of Education, and the Language Policy Secretariat of the local Catalan government, the Generalitat de Catalunya. The debate will be based upon the document: “Sociodemographic and linguistics study of 4-year secondary students in Catalonia. Compulsory Secondary Education Assessment 2006” promoted by the Generalitat de Catalunya that was made public in July 2008.

The objective of this document, in which pupils from 51 secondary schools in Catalonia participated, was to collect data on the sociodemographic profile of each student to be correlated with the results obtained on the scholastic performance tests that were administered at the Compulsory Secondary Education Assessment 2006 (PISA in English which stands for Programme for International Student Assessment).

According to the study, the percentage of initial Catalan-speaking students (39.9%) and initial Spanish-speaking students (42.8%) in Secondary Education in Catalonia is very similar, whereas the population group claiming to use both as the initial language is much smaller (14%). Despite this, when students are asked about what their language is, this percentage increases to 28%, whilst 36% of students regard Catalan as their language and 34% of students regard Spanish as their language. With regard to the claimed knowledge of the language, Catalan was found to be slightly above Spanish, even though the population at the lower score range did not exceed 5% of the total in any case. On the other hand, the study also pointed out that neither the knowledge of Catalan nor Spanish differed between public and private schools, whilst the knowledge of English was higher in private schools.

As regards the language spoken by teachers to their students, it is usually Catalan (73.8%). In contrast, the number of students that use Catalan when addressing their teachers is lower than the number of students whose teachers always speak Catalan in the classroom. The difference is 9.3 percent points.

Officials from the Department of Education of the Generalitat, researchers and professors from different Catalan universities, as well as teachers from secondary schools in Catalonia will be participating in this day of reflection. The event will also be honoured with the presence of Hugo Baetens, emeritus professor of English and bilinguism at the University of Brussels. The dean of the University of Barcelona, Dídac Ramírez, will also be participating, jointly with Joaquim Prats, chairman of the Education System Assessment Council, and Bernat Joan Marí, secretary of language policy at the closing of the event.

Even though this is a free-admission event, prior registration to attend is highly recommended.

To register, please email: consell_sup_aval.educacio@gencat.cat