October 2005

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A MINISTERIAL DECREE ON LANGUAGES IGNORES THE TEACHING OF THE “REGIONAL” LANGUAGES OF FRANCE

October 2005 – The implementation of the measures included in the Law of Management and Programming for the Future of School Education, best known as Law Fillon, has begun. A governmental decree regulates the main measures on the teaching of languages, the goals, the assessment criterion and the setting up of an academic commission for the languages. It was unexpected, though, that the languages which the decree refers to would be exclusively foreign languages.

One of the measures affecting minoritised languages in France, the organisation of their teaching and the levels of competence achieved –in particular those regarding levels A1 in elementary school, B1 as the first language , A2 as second language and B2 as first and second language- is established under title I. Its content has an essential consequence since it implies that the foreign and the so-called regional languages no longer go hand in hand in the legal texts. Such distinction contravenes the legal dispositions set up in the decrees on foreign and regional language teaching enacted in 2002 and 2003, which regulated the schedules and the programmes of elementary school and made, legally speaking, both regional and foreign languages equal in terms of importance. Therefore, it also seems to contravene the spirit of the Law Fillon, which establishes in article 20 that “the teaching of the regional languages and cultures can be offered throughout the period of compulsory education in accordance with the modalities drawn up via agreements between the state and the regional or local administrations”. These administrations, therefore, clearly accepted liability for the teaching of the regional languages.

Thus, the measures set up in the new decree leave aside the regional languages and only refer to the foreign ones. An example of such omission is that the decree determines the levels of competence of foreign languages in school but it does not give details on the regional languages. The state, consequently, seems to have withdrawn from the responsibility of promoting them.

Nevertheless, it is still to be seen how this secondary legislation will be enforced and whether its interpretation will be strict.