We regret that another event prevents us from contributing to the conference and take this opportunity to draw the attention of participants to some recent developments in our work concerning plurilingual and intercultural education. In particular we are developing a project around the concepts of Languages in Education / Languages for Education, with a particular concern for the right to quality education for all. We are looking at a transversal, integrated approach to the language curriculum where the languages of schooling obviously play a central role.

Access to education and success at school depends heavily on language competences. Some pupils may be disadvantaged as soon as they start school because their competences do not match the school’s expectations: children from disadvantaged backgrounds, children from migrant families, or children whose first language is a regional language. But all, whatever their language repertoire, must learn to communicate in school. A command of the language(s) of schooling is vital to success at school and social advancement.

One major challenge for education systems is to give learners, during their school education, language and intercultural competences which will enable them to operate effectively as citizens, acquire knowledge and develop open attitudes to otherness: this vision of the teaching of languages and cultures is referred to as plurilingual and intercultural education.

The founding principles of plurilingual and intercultural education are therefore:
•	recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity as guaranteed by Council of Europe conventions;
•	everyone’s right to use their language varieties as a medium of communication and a means of expressing their affiliations;
•	every learner’s right to gain experience and achieve a command of languages (language of schooling, first language, foreign language etc) and the related cultural dimensions according to their personal needs and expectations, be they cognitive, social, aesthetic or affective, so as to be able to develop the necessary competences in other languages by themselves after leaving school;
•	the centrality of human dialogue, which depends essentially on languages. The experience of otherness through languages and the cultures they carry is the precondition (necessary but not sufficient) for intercultural understanding and mutual acceptance.

Plurilingual and intercultural education covers the languages and cultures which are present in school but neither recognised nor taught, the languages recognised by the school but not taught, and the languages taught. Its aims are to:
•	implement a holistic approach to the teaching of the different subjects, i.e. identify and organise the transversal links and points of convergence among them, because language competence is a single entity, even if it has been divided into different school subjects;
•	define the teaching goals and forms of competence to be achieved explicitly and coherently in order to ensure in particular that learning is assessed fairly and transparently.

The Language Policy Division is developing reference tools to assist in analysing and constructing curricula in this spirit, with a strong focus on the right to quality education for all. Participants will find further information on the Division’s website which contains a Platform which will be further developed to offer an open and dynamic resource to support member states in their policies to promote equal access to quality education. 
This text is adapted from the introduction to the Platform which we invite you to consult: 

http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/langeduc/le_platformintro_EN.asp?

or 

www.coe.int/lang 

We wish you a successful conference.

Language Policy Division
Council of Europe
Strasbourg