NPLD members, the Welsh Language Board, Folkhälsan, Conseil Régional de Bretagne and the Mercator Research Centre, received European Community funding for its two-year pre-school project. The project, entitled Multilingual Early Language Transmission, will undertake a comparative research of the provisions, approaches and resources available in the various language communities.

The project seeks to increase the skills base of pre-school practitioners, raise the standards of skills and foster confidence amongst the adults involved within the sector and the community.  This in turn will provide the children with a strong educational foundation to go on and progress with their multilingual skills, thus strengthening communities and promoting cultural and linguistic diversity.

This will include providing information to parents on the benefits of multilingual pre-school education, both mother tongue language transmission and immersion, and the teaching tools and resources to practitioners. The study will make recommendations on the best practices available and the resources produced thereafter will be based on this innovative research.

An online guidebook and training programme will be developed to provide practitioners with the skills they need to run a successful nursery and a suite of practical tools will be produced for use in the playgroups in each target language.