With the aim of defining by 2009 a Community framework of reference on language skills, the European Commission adopted a Communication last week that presents the parameters for a survey to measure how well European students have mastered the first and second foreign language taught within the curricula of compulsory schooling. The process of gauging language skills responds to the educational objective fixed by the European Council, namely “measuring the mastery of basic skills through the teaching of at least two foreign languages to children from their earliest age”. The survey, conducted under the aegis of the services of the Commission and in collaboration with the competent national authorities of member states, will assess reading, oral understanding and writing skills in the five languages most taught in EU schools: English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. According to the European Commissioner for Education and Training Jan Figel, “the indicator of language skills is intended not to determine national league tables, but to review good practices in learning languages in order to foster exchanges between member states”. The new Commissioner for Multilingualism Leonard Orban presented the survey as a means to “permit Europe to gauge the existing divide in terms of the objective of access to multilingualism from infancy onwards”.
