bilingual education
The Bilingual Programme of the Region of Madrid
The Region of Madrid’s school curricula includes English, French and German language learning
The Bilingual Programme of the Region of Madrid encompasses several actions and projects aimed at bilingual education in our schools including English, French and German, making it an excellence-based reality that benefits the overall education community.
Our goals include providing schools with the necessary tools so that students can build sufficient communication skills in a foreign language to access any training and employment opportunities available.
Why is it excellent?
Since the 2004-2005 school year, the Region of Madrid has been a forerunner in the implementation of a bilingual programme that is geared to turning bilingualism into an identity sign. In the current school period, there are 369 bilingual public schools and 152 bilingual secondary schools in English-Spanish. In addition, there are 15 schools with French departments, 7 of which offer a dual-degree programme (Secondary Education-Baccalaureate) and 4 schools with German departments.
Main interventions
The Bilingual Programme of the Region of Madrid includes the following programmes, among others: Global Classrooms Model United Nations, Debating Tournament for bilingual secondary schools and Global Scholars.
MentorActúa Programme
Over the past two years, the Region of Madrid has carried out both editions of the pilot programme Mentoring and Backing through which secondary school teachers from bilingual schools had the opportunity to participate in a cross-training programme with other schools, and which was favourably assessed by the participants.
School teachers had the possibility of visiting other schools and the classrooms of other teachers in order to renew and enhance their own teaching and methodological strategies. A total of 1.215 teachers from 193 schools of the Region of Madrid participated in this programme focusing on the topics of bilingualism, active pedagogies and coexistence.
The Bilingual Programme was subsequently extended to 406 pre-schools and primary schools in our region.
At least 30% of lessons are taught in English each week.
During the 2024-2025 school period, a total of 35 schools will apply the Bilingual Programme to the second pre-school cycle (3 to 5 years of age).
Currently, the Community of Madrid has 196 institutes that teach bilingual education.
Some figures
- 2.407 conversation assistants contribute a great multicultural and linguistic variety in Madrid’s schools.
- 82% of sixth-grade students reach the target level specified in the external evaluations given in bilingual public schools.
- More than 2.000 secondary school teachers and over 3.600 primary school teachers have a competence level C1 in the English language.
- The Bilingual Program has already been implemented in the 51% of the Secondary Education Institutes and in the 46,6% of the public schools of the Community of Madrid
- The Training Plan in Foreign Languages created 2.340 job positions during the 2016-2017 period.
- Nearly 200 schools and more than 1.200 teachers have participated in the MentorActúa programme.
- 97,5% of the students sitting for the Bachibac exam pass it successfully.
- Almost 60% of secondary schools participate in the Global Classroom Model United Nations Programme.
- 35 public primary schools extend the Bilingual Programme to the second pre-school cycle.
Who is involved in the initiative?
This program is executed by the Ministry of Education and Research, with the collaboration of various agencies such as the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
There are also collaboration agreements with different national and international universities: Georgetown University, Boston University, University of Washington, Roosevelt University, Sussex University, Chichester University, Simon Fraser University, Canterbury Christ Church University, British Council, Trinity College London, Institute Franklin (UAH), American International Institute in Madrid, Institut Français, Label FrancEducation, BELC (Nantes), Complutense University, Rey Juan Carlos University, University of Alcalá, Carlos III University and Polytechnic University of Madrid.
