In the course of 2020-2021, the Eusle immersion program for the teaching of languages to children who do not know Euskera was launched in four centers. The results have been "positive", so it will now be extended to 24 other schools. This was explained by the Basque Government vice-minister of Education, Begoña Pedrosa, and the director of Diversity and Educational Inclusion, Lucía Torrealdai, at a hearing in Bilbao.

The programme, managed by the Department of Education, aims to provide children and young people with the minimum linguistic competence necessary for communication. Eusle is aimed at students in the 4th, 5th and 6th grades of Primary and young people in the 1st and 2nd grades of High School. The program lasts between 24 and 36 months, when the students have the possibility to reach the level of A2.

Children meet in small groups of five and ten people for ten and twelve hours a week. With the help of the tutor of the Eusle program, they use a didactic material specially developed for learning the language “based on use”. Once they have acquired the minimum communication capacity, they are encouraged to participate in the regular classes of the other pupils who are familiar with the language.

The objective of the program is to progressively integrate the students, so that in addition to achieving a better knowledge of the language, they must take into account other aspects. They want to pay special attention to the “emotional well-being” of the students and the group and, at school level, they want children to feel “satisfied, safe and motivated”.

More centres

Four pilot programmes were launched last year. For the course 2021-2022, a further 24 schools will be added to the dynamic: Eight Alaveses, fourteen Gipuzkoans and six Biscayan will participate. Furthermore, the universities, together with the Department of Education, will be responsible for evaluating the results of the programme.