Local language

Children of immigrants living in the Netherlands have for years had the opportunity to receive lessons in their mother tongue at primary school. Since 1998 this has been referred to as minority language teaching (OALT in Dutch), and has been the responsibility of local authorities. There are two variants of minority language teaching:
- a form of cultural education, in which pupils mainly learn about their own language and culture; or:
- use of the pupils' native language by the teacher in order to teach them the Dutch language.

How do local authorities implement the minority language teaching policy, and what kind of teaching is offered? This was studied in a survey of municipalities which have received specific funding for minority language teaching from central government. The study, carried out at the request of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, follows on from an exploratory survey of minority language teaching policy carried out by SCP in seven municipalities in 2001.

The first part of the report explains how local authorities and schools implement the policy and what obstacles they encounter. It presents a summary of the language groups covered by the policy and of the number of pupils in each language group who follow these lessons.
In the second part policymakers, school heads, minority language teachers and group teachers react to the results of the survey. They discuss the problems with the minority language teaching policy, suggest solutions and assign a score to minority language teaching and assess the options for minority language teaching in the future.