8/8/2019 International Schools in Spain and Bilingual Education by Augustine Okoro

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International Schools in Spain and Bilingual Education.Most international schools in Spain follow the English national curriculum

which initially meant that their purpose were to train and prepare students tocontinue their education in the UK or USA after completing their secondaryeducation in Spain, however NABSS which is the body responsible for

coordinating these schools later in conjunction with the Spanish ministry ofeducation and science decided to incorporate the Spanish curriculum intotheir program to give the students wider choice for after secondary furthereducation and also to make the students understand the Spanish educational,social and cultural life. This program introduced Spanish subjects likeconocimientos, lengua and sociales. Conocimientos deals with all thesciences, Geography and history , it is thought from primary to earlysecondary level and give the students strong foundation so they can easilyrelate terms and principles between the national curriculum and Spanishcurriculum, This later is broken into Sociales and ciencias as the studentsadvance to higher secondary class usually from year 9, some studentsleaving the international school setting to do the Spanish equivalent of ALevels which is called bachilleratos do very well because of the foundationfrom studying conocimientos, ciencias and sociales alongside their nationalcurriculum subjects, conociemiento, ciencias and sociales deals with subjectsfrom basic science and history to IGCSE physics, chemistry, biology,geography and history equivalent levels.Lengua deals with the Spanish language and literature, it is just likeconocimientos taught across primary and secondary up to IGCSE and thestudents normally take the IGCSE Spanish Language examinations at the endof secondary education, this strengthen their use of their first language and

help them adjust easily when they go ahead to study in a Spanish universityafter doing their A Levels in English, their strong understanding of the Spanishlanguage and application give them more options when making choices forfurther studies in the university they can chose between university whereEnglish is medium of instructions and that where Spanish is medium ofinstruction.The third subject which is taught across primary and secondary schools in theinternational schools is Sociales which like I said earlier is part ofconocimientos until higher secondary when it is separated as a single subjectfrom science, this subject deals with all social studies related subjectsincluding history,economics,commerce,citizenship.

Apart from this Spanish subjects so many international languages were alsodrafted into the education programs, languages like German, French, andChinese are taught alongside English and Spanish.This approach has boosted the image of international schools in Spain andhas created the bilingual culture and provides greater advantages to studentsafter school both in furthering their education and in entering the Job places.