language of instruction

The tribunal declares null and void the 2008 Catalan government decree which stated that Catalan “should be used as the language of instruction” for pupils between 3 and 6 years old. The Supreme Court also overturned the article that banned the separation of pupils for linguistic reasons and the one that established that teachers should guarantee that foreign pupils learn Catalan in order to achieve “rapid integration”. The Catalan minister for Education, Irene Rigau, says “all stays the same” because the education law is newer than the decree affected by the ruling and also states that Catalan is the language of instruction in Catalonia.

The Catalan Government appealed the order of the Catalan Supreme Court, which insisted that the Catalan school system should be modified in order to comply with the Spanish Supreme Court’s sentence from last December to include Spanish as language of instruction. With the Government’s appeal, the Court’s deadline is automatically suspended, until the Court decides on the appeal. The appeal is based on two sentences from the Spanish Constitutional Court validating the Catalan school model, as well as on the linguistic immersion principle which guarantees social cohesion and equal opportunities.