Proyectos

According to the PISA Study, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, immigrant students score below non-immigrant students in most PISA-participating countries, both before and after accounting for socio-economic status. So, what is the fundamental difference between immigrant students and non-immigrant students if socio-economic status is not responsible? It is that the likelihood increases of immigrant families maintaining a language in the home that is different from the language of school. The maintenance of a different home language to the language of school renders the student at a disadvantage in terms of the acquisition of the language of school, comprehension of teaching and in terms of the feasibility of support with school work.

This issue needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency because it is negatively connected with many disadvantageous outcomes such as decreased capacity to comprehend the education available, increased early school leaving, low literacy levels, decreased employability, an inability to socially integrate fully and ultimately an increased likelihood of a life of poverty.

The project UP TO SPEED has been designed to address, recognise, assist and monitor the
linguistic challenges difficulties faced by immigrant families who maintain a different home language to that of the language of school. It offers an innovative teaching method on how to support students from these households through the gamification language learning to afford them increased success at school.

To do so, seven partner institutions, including school authorities, social entities supporting migrants and experts in school education, language learning and ICT based pedagogical technologies. Target users of the project are primary level teachers, support teachers and school leaders. Target beneficiaries are immigrant families who maintain a different home language to that of the language of school.

The project will strengthen the profiles of teaching professionals by supporting their professional development, increase their ability to deal with diversity in the classroom, improve their linguistic awareness, provide them with strategies to manage a multilingual classroom and improve their ICT skills. Through its digital tool output it will facilitate accurate assessment of individual students and class language acquisition progress and track of the level of support and collaboration of student’s families and carers through playful competition.

UP TO SPEED will support also schools in tackling early school leaving by increasing the quality of educational opportunities available, enabling the monitoring of language acquisition to ensure that that a lack of comprehension of course materials is reduced or eliminated as a factor in early school leaving in Europe.