RIGA, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- A petition signed by 14,000 supporters of bilingual education in Latvia's ethnic minority schools was submitted to the Baltic country's parliament on Monday, local media reported.
Latvian government is scheduled to decide Tuesday on draft amendments to the Education Law that would provide for a gradual transition to Latvian as virtually the only language of teaching in all public schools in Latvia by Sept. 1, 2021.
If the draft legislation reaches the parliament, lawmakers will be obliged to consider the petition against the reform as it has gathered more than 10,000 signatures of eligible voters, the minimum number needed to put a public initiative before the parliament.
Jelena Bacinska, an advocate of Latvia's Russian-language schools and a representative of the bilingual education initiative, said that the proposed reform has not been planned thoroughly enough, and that first it would be necessary to analyze the consequences of an earlier language reform -- carried out in Latvia's ethnic minority schools in 2004 to significantly increase the proportion of subjects taught in Latvian.
"The new reform will be introduced without any basis. As a parent, I believe that this will be a pure experiment conducted at my child's expense," said Bacinska.
Bacinska agreed that schoolchildren have to master the Latvian language. "We are not against it, but to study in a non-native language is a completely different matter."
In December 2017, the government endorsed a plan for the gradual transition to the Latvian language in all public schools.
In preschools, kids would be taught bilingually, and three bilingual teaching models would be available in ethnic minority schools from grade one to six. From grade seven to nine, students would be taught 80 percent of all subjects in Latvian, and Latvian would become the only language of instruction in high school.
