A brief CV

Mark is Head of English Programmes for the British Council in Spain with responsibility for the British Council’s initiatives in support of the teaching and learning of English across the country. In recent years the vast majority of this work has been focused on multilingual and bilingual education and he manages the British Council’s partnership with the Spanish Ministry of Education and Regional Governments on the national Bilingual Education Programme as well as British Council support for other Regional Government initiatives. He is also involved in developing British Council work in Europe in relation to multilingual & bilingual education, and represents the British Council at conferences internationally as well as in Spain. He was previously an English teacher and a teacher educator, working with Spanish teachers of English for many years. He has lived in Spain for much, much longer than the 6 months he had originally planned for!

Bilingual Education in Spain 25 years on: opportunities and challenges

Bilingual (English-Spanish) education in Spain has been mainstreamed for many years now and our own British Council – Ministry of Education – Regional Government programme (BEP) has been running since 1996. Reflection on what we are doing has always been key and as a result of this in 2019 we began a series of initiatives to update and refresh our contribution to the BEP. However the initial months of the pandemic gave us the time for a deeper dive into our programme and a series of recent visits to schools since January 2022 has consolidated many of the opinions we formed about the opportunities and challenges ahead. Based on our work in the BEP, in this presentation I will look at some of these relevant beyond our programme including the importance of clear objectives for bilingual education, an inclusive approach, relevant CPD and school-based research.