The Government delivered to France several electronic devices to facilitate the learning of Portuguese. Paulo Cafôfo says that the initiative will respond to students who do not have language classes.
The Secretary of State for Communities, Paulo Cafôfo, was in Paris to start delivering tablets that will make it easier for people of Portuguese descent to learn Portuguese and announced a distance learning pilot project in Bordeaux and Strasbourg.
“These teams can also be used to test a project designed for France, Strasbourg and Bordeaux, because we believe that in places where it is not possible to form a class, new technologies will allow a teacher to teach these classes remotely,” he said. Paulo Cafôfo in statements to journalists.
The Secretary of State for the Communities has been in France since Friday, having passed through Bordeaux, and delivered to the General Consulate of Portugal in Paris dozens of tablets to students of Portuguese language classes in associations in the Paris region. Of the approximately 24,000 tablets intended for children learning Portuguese in the world, around 1,200 will be distributed in France.
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These devices, which have software in Portuguese and learning tools, will serve, as the Secretary of State also announced, to reach students in France where, due to the lack of enrollment, it is not possible to form a class and locate a teacher in person.
“There are, it is true, students who want to attend the teaching of Portuguese, but the dispersion [de alunos] it does not allow you to form a class and assign a teacher. And, therefore, this is a situation that, in a complementary way, will respond to students who currently cannot access Portuguese classes”, explained the minister.
This pilot project will start in the cities of Strasbourg and Bordeaux at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year and, according to Paulo Cafôfo, it may later be extended to the rest of France.
Susana, who lives in Viry-Chatillon, on the outskirts of Paris, and was at the Paris Consulate General to pick up one of these tablets, told Agência Lusa about the difficulty of enrolling her son, now 14, in classes Of portuguese.
“On the part of the school it was very complicated and then I approached the Portuguese teacher directly, who teaches in an association, right in the second grade of primary school and, from then on, it went on forever,” explains this Portuguese woman who lives in France. , who says her son’s connection to Portugal was strengthened by his mastery of writing.
In France, the teaching of the Portuguese language in primary schools is in charge of the Portuguese State through the Camões Institute and the responsibility passes to the French State from the sixth year, when starting basic education in France. However, many students end up learning Portuguese in an associative environment due to the difficulty of continuity between primary school and basic education or the low number of enrollments.
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“We chose to favor parallel teaching [com a entrega de tablets], linked to the associative movement, in this embrace that the associations give to the Portuguese culture. Our preference is to deliver tablets to parallel education, because our priority is the descendants of Portuguese”, explained Paulo Cafôfo.
According to the Secretary of State for Communities, there are currently 14,000 students learning Portuguese in France in public education and in associations, with 102 Portuguese teachers placed through the Camões Institute. At the moment, it is not known if there will be an increase in teachers for the 2023-2024 school year.
Paulo Cafôfo continued this afternoon with his program in France, after having had a meeting with businessmen of Portuguese origin in Paris and on Sunday he will be present at the Portuguese party in Pontault-Combault, one of the largest in France.
Source: Observadora
