The European Parliament adopted the resolution based on the own-initiative report drafted by Miguel PORTAS (GUE/NGL, PT) on integrating immigrants in Europe through schools and multilingual education. (Please see the summary of 12/07/2005.)

Rights of children in the school system and duties of the Member States : Parliament b elieved that the school-age children of immigrants had a right to State education, irrespective of the legal status of their families, and that this right extended to learning the language of their host country, without prejudice to their right to learn their mother tongue. Furthermore, even when the children and/or descendants of immigrants (second and third generations) are proficient in the language of their host country, they should be given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with their mother tongue and the culture of their country of origin, without public funding being ruled out for that purpose. Parliament maintained, however, that the integration of immigrants at school must not adversely affect the development of the language of the education system, especially if that language is itself a minority language.

Role of the EU in promoting good practice: Parliament c alled on the Commission to increase its support for the specific training of teachers, particularly those who come from immigrants" countries of origin, interested in the development of various methods of promoting integration through multilingualism (e.g. CLIL or multilingual or mother-tongue literacy) and, under the Leonardo da Vinci, Youth and Socrates programmes (Comenius and Grundtvig projects), in widening the range of target languages to cover immigrants" mother tongues. Support should be channelled into educational projects which, over and above curriculum requirements, teach the language and culture of the host country to immigrants who are not of school age, and towards bridge-building projects to foster dialogue between the culture and history of the host region and the culture and history of immigrant communities. Consideration should be given especially to projects including persons with parental control, and mothers in particular. One way of translating the above policy into reality would be for the EU to provide support for the setting-up of a European network of schools employing different methods to promote integration through multilingualism .

The European Parliament adopted the resolution based on the own-initiative report drafted by Miguel PORTAS (GUE/NGL, PT) on integrating immigrants in Europe through schools and multilingual education. (Please see the summary of 12/07/2005.)

Rights of children in the school system and duties of the Member States : Parliament b elieved that the school-age children of immigrants had a right to State education, irrespective of the legal status of their families, and that this right extended to learning the language of their host country, without prejudice to their right to learn their mother tongue. Furthermore, even when the children and/or descendants of immigrants (second and third generations) are proficient in the language of their host country, they should be given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with their mother tongue and the culture of their country of origin, without public funding being ruled out for that purpose. Parliament maintained, however, that the integration of immigrants at school must not adversely affect the development of the language of the education system, especially if that language is itself a minority language.

Role of the EU in promoting good practice: Parliament c alled on the Commission to increase its support for the specific training of teachers, particularly those who come from immigrants" countries of origin, interested in the development of various methods of promoting integration through multilingualism (e.g. CLIL or multilingual or mother-tongue literacy) and, under the Leonardo da Vinci, Youth and Socrates programmes (Comenius and Grundtvig projects), in widening the range of target languages to cover immigrants" mother tongues. Support should be channelled into educational projects which, over and above curriculum requirements, teach the language and culture of the host country to immigrants who are not of school age, and towards bridge-building projects to foster dialogue between the culture and history of the host region and the culture and history of immigrant communities. Consideration should be given especially to projects including persons with parental control, and mothers in particular. One way of translating the above policy into reality would be for the EU to provide support for the setting-up of a European network of schools employing different methods to promote integration through multilingualism .

The committee adopted the own-initiative report by Miguel PORTAS (GUE/NGL, PT) on integrating immigrants in Europe through schools and multilingual education. The report looked at the rights of children in the school system and the duties of the Member States, and also examined the role of the Union in promoting good practice. It stressed that, even when the children and/or descendants of immigrants are proficient in the language of their host country, they should be given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with their mother tongue and the culture of their country of origin, without ruling out public funding for that purpose. It also said that primary and secondary schools should provide educational support to immigrant children, especially when they are not proficient in the language of their host country, to enable them to adapt more easily and prevent them being placed at a disadvantage.

Among its recommendations, the committee urged the Member States to encourage educational establishments to "take measures making for linguistic diversity whereby the choice of alternatives to the official language would not be limited to the most widely spoken European languages".

MEPs also advocated using different methods of promoting integration through multilingualism, such as the "Content and Language Integrated Learning" (CLIL) method, and wanted the Commission to provide increased support for specific training in this and other methods. Under the Leonardo da Vinci, Youth and Socrates programmes, the range of target languages should be widened to cover immigrants' mother tongues.

The committee also wanted to see an EU network of schools employing different methods to promote integration through multilingualism and recommended that funding for this and other initiatives be provided under the horizontal lifelong learning programme. Lastly, MEPs called for special attention to be paid to the dissemination of cultural works from immigrants' countries of origin.