The European School Model: laying the foundations of multilingual and multicultural education in Europe

The paper considers the European School Model, the main focus being on the causes and circumstances of its emergence and its development as a multilingual and multicultural school of a new type.Long before the reforms of the European national education systems in late 20 century, prerequisites for multilingual education of a new type were laid down, and the European School Model emerged, which was different on principle from traditional European schools based on national education systems of nation-states. The European School project began as an initiative of a group of parents involved in diplomatic service, who considered that national schools in European states did not meet linguistic, cultural and academic demands of their children sufficiently. From a private initiative, the experiment in creating a multilingual and multicultural school grew over into a large public project financed by the European Community. The paper presents an analysis of reasons, which ensured successful functioning of European Schools as centres for initial training of highly qualified multilingual and multicultural personnel for common European institutions. The most important component of the European School Model is a multilingual arrangement of teaching that pursues the aim to prepare students for life and activity in societies that are different from each other linguistically and culturally. To achieve high levels of functional proficiency in mastering at least two languages, the first foreign language is made obligatory during the entire school study period, and, starting with the third year of the secondary school, a part of the school subjects are taught in the first foreign language. As compared to other forms of the intensive foreign language teaching, the European School is known for a gradual transfer to the use of the foreign language as a medium of instruction. Balanced bilingualism in academic use of both the native and the first foreign language is achieved through introducing subjects requiring higher cognitive skills and abstract-logical thinking only in secondary school. The paper next considers the ways Euroschools achieve a multilingual and multicultural environment both in classroom and out of class. The Euroschool model envisages everyday communication and mutual interaction of students from different language sections on the playground, in the gym and in the corridors and recreation halls. The comparative studies of the results shown by the students of Euroschools and other schools with intensive language training which use foreign language as a medium of instruction, demonstrate higher effectiveness of Euroschools in multilingual teaching even when compared with the Canadian language immersion model, where students receive higher language exposure. Summing up, a conclusion can be made that the European School Model's experience in organizing multilingual education proves that the controversial demands of academic, linguistic and cultural development can be coordinated, and the aim of balanced multilingualism can be achieved. The success of the Euroschool model is determined by creating a language environment outside the classroom, the development of productive language skills and by teaching the first foreign language as a subject throughout the school course of studies, which contributes to constant perfection of the quality of language teaching.

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