The IBI/BEI project: monitoring bilingual education in primary schools

Abstract

This paper tackles an example of bilingual education in primary education presenting a project carried out at primary school level on the teaching of three subjects (i.e. Science, Geography, Art) delivered in English, which was also the language for class interaction, to provide a fully immersive educational environment. The project, called IBI/BEI (Insegnamento Bilingue ItaliaBilingual Education Italy), was developed by the Italian Ministry of Education, the British Council Italy and the USR Lombardia (the Regional Education Office of Lombardy) on the basis of a project implemented in Spain in 1996. This study provides the data collected during a monitoring activity on the project and reflects on the best practices for promoting bilingual education in the early stages of learning. Results demonstrate that the IBI/BEI project set out to prepare children to face the challenge of internationalization, but also showed a major limitation, as it did not continue in the subsequent stages of education. This drawback was mentioned by all the actors involved in the study, who expressed their concern towards such a valuable initiative being a oneoff experience.