Meeting place

A school is a meeting place where students, parents and staff - often from diverse backgrounds - are united to share and build up knowledge. A Language Friendly School is an answer to the increasing multilingualism present in schools across the world; a result of people migrating to other places seeking employment, reuniting with loved ones or escaping war and conflict. Within a Language Friendly School, everyone welcomes and values all languages spoken by the students, the parents and the school stakeholders.

All schools should aim to become linguistically and culturally inclusive, meaning they recognize and embrace their students’ multilingualism, and take action to give space to these languages within the school community.

A bottom-up whole school approach

Language Friendly Schools are schools that have developed a language plan involving all members of the school: students, teachers and staff. It is a plan that is adapted to the school’s own needs and aims at creating an inclusive and language friendly learning environment for all students.

A Language Friendly School-plan is flexible, realistic and allows for incremental changes. Small steps go a long way!

Vision

With the Language Friendly School, we envision a world in which:

1. All children have access to a language friendly-learning environment where they feel accepted and valued for who they are.

2. No child is punished for speaking his or her mother tongues in school by 2030, the deadline of the Sustainable Development Goals.