Translators to help immigrant pupils

THE Balearic government will launch a service of translators to act as mediators between foreign families and schools, and it will have an initial budget of 16'000 euros, it was announced yesterday. Joana Rossellló, the director general of planning and innovation, said that newly arrived immigrant children receive special attention from their first day in class. She added that teachers who so wish may take special multi-cultural courses, and there are specific teachers who help children individually to adapt to the school's curriculum. Rossello said that the education and sports ministries had increased the budget for the programme of inter-cultural mediators by 13 percent to 136'600 euros. Twelve town councils and groups of councils back the programme under which immigrant children who join the school late in the term are helped so that they can catch up. They also organise specific activities. Rossello went on to say that the number of special classrooms in primary and secondary schools, set up to improve the apprenticeship of foreign students in the language and culture of the islands, will rise from last year's 275 to 300 this term. The teachers' trades union has called on the government to draw up a strategic plan to help foreign students integrate. Union secretary Biel Caldentey said that it should cover not only teaching Spanish to immigrant students but also to teach Catalan language and culture and increase human resources to support the students during their period of adaptation. He said that in the first term of the 2002/03 school year, 678 new foreign pupils started school, seven percent more than the previous year. In relative terms, the Balearics has the second highest number of immigrant pupils. Caldentey said that the administration should draw its own conclusions and provide more resources.