Bilingual education by country or region
[4] In the autonomous regions of China many children of the country's major ethnic minorities attend public schools where the medium of instructions is the local language, such as Uyghur or Tibetan.
Traditionally, the textbooks there were little different from merely a translated version of the books used in the Chinese schools throughout the country; however, as of 2001, a move was on foot to create more teaching materials with locally based content.
On the island of Hokkaido, the indigenous and endangered Ainu language is receiving newfound interest with establishment of a small number of bilingual Ainu–Japanese elementary schools.
The Japanese bilingual education is different from other countries, such as Australia where children begin learning a second language when they are three years through their primary caregivers and preschool programs.
Southeast is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia.
[28] In July 2009 Department of Education moved towards mother-tongue based learning initially by issuing an order which allowed two alternative three-year bridging plans.
Generally, it can be said that there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to improve English competence in the population, and bilingual approaches, where language is taught through subject content, are seen to be the most effective means of attaining this.
The most significant limiting factors are the shortage of teachers linguistically competent to teach in a second language and the costs involved in use of expatriate native speakers for this purpose.
[48] In Andalusia (Spain's southernmost region), things have changed drastically concerning bilingual education since the introduction of the Plurilingualism Promotion Plan by the autonomous government.
In addition to this new European scene, the Scheme for the Promotion of Plurilingualism has learned a lot from the first experimental bilingual sections set up in some schools by the Andalusian government in 1998.
Being aware of the necessity of the Andalusian people to adapt to the new scenario, a major government plan, called "strategies for the second modernization of Andalusia", was designed in 2003.
The programmes are: In addition to Castilian Spanish being the primary official language of Spain, the kingdom also has several co-official regional languages which enjoy equal and unbiased constitutional protection and promotion: Catalan/Valencian (in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands), Galician (in Galicia), Basque (in the Basque Country and the northern zone of Navarre) and Aranese (in Val d'Aran, Catalonia).
Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man have each established bilingual programmes which provide education through the medium of their indigenous language.
There are current plans to extend further provision in urban centres such as Cardiff, Newport, Swansea and Llanelli to cater for growing demand; this has caused controversy in some areas.
In the Western flank of Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Gwynedd and Anglesey, most primary and secondary schools are Welsh medium or have bilingual streams.
Most notable bilingual programmes that exist include Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, Cree, Blackfoot, Ojibwe, Mohawk, Mi'kmaq, and Pacific Coast Salish languages.
Prior to this, as late as the 1970s and early 1980s, First Nations and Inuit in Canada, as Native Americans in the United States, were forced into residential schools imposed on them by the Canadian government to integrate indigenous cultures into European-Canadian society.
As of 2010, new programmes are mushrooming across Canada to try to save what is left, but are often met with mixed success and funding challenges at federal, provincial, and reserve levels.
Similar programmes are being developed for both Hindi and Punjabi to serve in representing the large South Asian cultural community and its interests in the City of Surrey.
In both English and French-medium schools, one can study and take government exams in Japanese, Punjabi, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, and German at the secondary level.
[55] In dire need of their skills and industries, the Poles received the "rights of Englishmen," and established the first bilingual schools with subjects taught in English and Polish.
By the mid-19th century, private and public bilingual schools had include such native languages as Czech, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.
In the 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Horne v. Flores, the majority opinion stated, "Research on ELL instruction indicates there is documented, academic support for the view that SEI (Structured English Immersion) is significantly more effective than bilingual education.
One paper states that two-way developmental bilingual education programs in elementary school have the most success in language minority students' long term academic achievement.
[68] In 2000, the California Department of Education contracted with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and WestEd to conduct a five-year evaluation of the effects of Proposition 227.
[72] Following similar First Nations' models to Canada, academic linguists throughout the United States are working closely with Native American reservations communities to establish immersion and second-language programs for a number of respective tribal languages including Navajo, Hopi, Cherokee, Ojibwe, Lakhota, and Sioux, among others.
Due to the combination of often a violent and isolative relationship between European settlers and Native Americans, their languages and communities have suffered dramatically in terms of facing extreme endangerment or extinction.
Native programs often suffer a lack of state support in terms of funding or encouragement due in large part to the strong preference towards a melting-pot society.
In the early 1970s, when federal Title VII programs, a bilingual education project, were introduced on Montana reservations, the number of Northern Cheyenne language speakers increased dramatically.
Native American students learning under such a bilingual system became willing to speak the Cheyenne language in daily life and even developed a high English level.
