FEDELE

On the 9th June, Carmen Timor and Ana Cózar, president and manager of FEDELE respectively, held a meeting with the Department for Educational Planning at the Ministry of Education. The Department was represented by José María Fernández Lacasa, Director General of Management and Educational Planning at the Ministry of Education and David Ferrán Priestley, Deputy Director General for International Cooperation and Overseas Educational Development.

This meeting provided FEDELE with the first contact with the Ministry of Education and a chance to introduce the Spanish as a Foreign Language sector in Spain, the work of FEDELE and their main needs with regard to the Ministry. With this in mind, FEDELE brought up the following subjects:

  • A general presentation of FEDELE and its member schools, general information, relationships with other institutions (Instituto Cervantes, Turespaña and ICEX). Here we emphasised that FEDELE and the Ministry of Education share the common goal of promoting Spain as an educational destination.
  • The need to develop a common strategy for the teaching of Spanish in Spain using the Ministry’s network of Education Departments found throughout the world. We explained the relationships FEDELE already has with many of the Education Departments but explained that there was a need for a common plan that could be applied to the entire network.
  • Register of schools not regulated by the Ministry of Education – visas. Here we spoke of the need for our schools to be registered with the Ministry of Education in order to facilitate the application for visas. We asked about the possibility of accredited schools being registered in the Ministry’s non-regulated schools register which currently doesn’t include any private Spanish language schools.
  • The possibility of offering university credits for specific courses offered by our schools.

The representatives of the Ministry emphasised the interest being shown by the Ministry of Education in joining forces to attract more students of Spanish to Spain and at the same time to increase international interest in studying Spanish in public education. They explained that the Spanish government is currently designing a strategic plan for the international promotion of Spanish.

For FEDELE this was a great opportunity to present the educational offer of our member schools and also to establish a way of collaborating with the government which plays a fundamental role in the teaching of Spanish.

Image copyright: FEDELE.