About the Initial Teacher Training Primary Languages Project

The Initial Teacher Training Primary Languages Project began as a one-year pilot in September 2001 as a joint initiative of the Teacher Training Agency and the Ministère de l'Education Nationale, supported by CILT, the National Centre for Languages. In its first year, the project brought together higher education institutions in England and IUFMs in France with the common purpose of providing teacher training for the primary sector that included an element of teaching a foreign language. Each of the five universities was twinned with an institution in the partner country, allowing the exchange of ideas between students and trainers as well as the opportunity to spend a period abroad in the partner country as part of the training.

Due to the initial success of this project, further places were allocated on these courses to enable thirteen universities to be twinned with partner institutions in the second year of the initiative. Over this two-year period, the Agency, working closely with the French Government and the French Embassy, held a number of workshops and conferences to support the initiative.

Now in its third year, the scheme has further expanded to include partner higher education institutions in Germany and Spain. This has been achieved by establishing a network of partnerships with the Baden-Württemberg Government in Germany and the Ministerio de Educación in Spain.

The Teacher Training Agency is an executive Non-Departmental Public Body of the Department for Education and Skills (DFES). Its purpose is to raise standards in schools by attracting able and committed people to teaching and by improving the quality of teacher training in the UK.

Within the Ministry (FR), the Direction de l'Enseignement Supérieur (DES) is responsible for the IUFM, for the policies of teacher training in the primary and secondary sectors. The Délégation aux Relations Internationales et à la Coopération (DRIC) plays a part in setting up projects which include an element of exchange and/or of mobility of teaching personnel or trainers.

CILT is the UK government's national centre of expertise for languages, which is an independent charitable trust supported by central government grants, with the aim of collecting and disseminating information on all aspects of modern languages and the teaching of modern languages.

The supporting organisation for the German partners.

The Ministry for Education (ES), Culture and Sports is a public body of the government administration, in charge of proposing and enforcing the general directives of the National Government related to policies on education, culture and sports.