12,000 native English teachers to teach Spaniards

This story from last year is reminiscent of plans by France's Sarközy (de Nagy-Bocsa) to boost English teaching at French public schools. Zapatero's desire for Spanish children to become fluent in English highlights the spread of English in Europe, a region where French used to be dominant in the second and third language slots but is now increasingly losing out to English in spite of stiff resistance from French institutions and the French government's funding of Lycées Français and Instituts Français throughout the European Union. On the other hand, the kind of Spanglish used in this article would suggest that the Spanish still have some work ahead of them before they can compete with the likes of the Swedes, let alone English native speakers on the global marketplace.

Spanish Prime Minister announces plans to develop English education in Spain
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By h.b. - Feb 19, 2008 - 2:41 PM
Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - Photo EFE
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero set a ten year target for students to dominate what the Spanish often refer to as 'the language of Shakespeare'

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has unveiled ambitious new plans for the teaching of English in Spain. He has given an undertaking that 15% of total classes given in Spanish schools will be in English within four years, with the intention that children who pass through the Spanish education system will be bilingual and dominate the language in ten years.

For the plan to be put into action some 12,000 native English teachers are to be employed, together with a further 8,000 native teachers assistants. 20,000 Spanish teachers of English will meanwhile be given a month’s course in an English speaking country.

Speaking at an institute in Fuenlabrada, Madrid, the Prime Minister said that Spain needed the move to complete economically, and that Spanish youngsters would benefit by being able to compete professionally.
‘There are families who can easily pay for their children to travel or study abroad’, he said, ‘but our priority is for those who cannot’.

Courtesy of Edward J. Cunningham

Decline of French Teaching in Valencia, Spain

In a this pdf from the www.sie.upv.es web site, interesting statistics document the steep decline of French teaching in the area of Valencia, Spain in just five years 1995/2000:

Decline of French in the Spanish Educational System

O ensino do francés a partir dos anos setenta = L'enseignement du français depuis les années 70French teaching from the 1970's
Author: TATO Ma. Silvina, Universidade da Coruña, Spain

Résumé / Abstract
This article presents an analysis of the progressive decline of the French language in our educational system at the pre-university level, mainly in the elementary, secondary and vocational schools during the years that the General Education Act of 1970 was in effect. There is an analysis of how this language was gradually replaced by English as the language most commonly elected by the student body. Also presented is a panoramic view of the redistribution of French and English within the framework of the current Education Act LOGSE.
Revue / Journal Title
Sarmiento ISSN 1138-5863
Source / Source
2000, no4, pp. 119-151 (2 p.1/4)
Langue / Language
Espagnol

Spain: They speak better English than they do French

The drive into Spain was a long one; and I didn’t realize we had to go up and down so many mountain roads, which made it longer. I must’ve forgotten we were in the Pyrenees. Though we did drive right next to the bottom of this massive dam, which was a cool sight.
...
” Again I experienced the same thing when we went to Spain last year—even if you’re right over the border, there is no French spoken. They speak better English than they do French. It’s probably a matter of choice too, in a rebellious way.

French is losing ground fast

In wordquests.info:

English is the dominant global language

English is becoming more popular than French in many countries
The dominance of English as the world's lingua franca continues to grow, with the number of pupils studying French dwindling every year.
The predominance of English on the internet, the relative ease of learning basic English and the perception that English is "cooler" —thanks in large part to popular music and films—means French is becoming more and more restricted to older generations and the upper classes of many countries where it used to be the second language of choice in schools.

French is losing ground fast

French remains a beautiful language much appreciated by the upper class but it is losing ground in curricula, even in areas near the French-German border. French is still holding up compared to Italian and Spanish, but that may change.
Given the difficulty of French grammar and spelling, many prefer not to learn French. A teacher from the Spanish town of Burgos said most of her colleagues agreed that French was "in free fall".
A teacher from Portugal said in her country 70% of Portuguese students preferred to take English courses, compared to just 10% for French.
Even in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, English has crowded French out of the classroom, despite French being one of the country's official languages.
In Russia, where speaking French was once a prized talent among the tsars, French is trailing "far behind English" in Moscow and Saint Petersburg schools.