In this article, George Wilson, Head of English and School Education at the British Council in France, presents our recent international workshop sharing international practice around content and language integration in schools.
The British Council plays an important role in building and strengthening relationships between the UK and countries around the world, and one key way in which we do this is by supporting the teaching, learning and assessment of English globally.
It is for this reason that, in November 2025, the British Council and France Éducation international hosted an international workshop in Sèvres, France, exploring ways of maximising learning outcomes linked to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).
This event brought together 120 teachers, teacher educators, school leaders, researchers and policymakers working in the fields of primary and secondary education to discuss, share and learn. Participants came from 14 countries and included representatives from international organisations such as the Council of Europe, UNESCO, Expertise France and the OECD. They were united by a shared interest in the integration of language and content within schools, and by a desire to learn from one another and exchange ideas.
The event opened with short testimonies from school pupils from different parts of the world, who shared their varied experiences of content and language integration. These videos, filmed with the support of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the Académie de Paris, enabled participants to refine a shared working definition of CLIL that framed discussions over the following two days. The session also highlighted the tensions that can develop between formal definitions and classroom practices. This, in turn, helped to lower participants’ inhibitions by underlining that there is no single, rigid CLIL methodology, but rather a range of practices shaped by local contexts and classroom realities.
The programme then continued with a presentation by Christa Rawkins of the OECD on the forthcoming PISA Foreign Language Assessment, offering insights into what it is expected to reveal about CLIL in the participating countries.
The next session was a conversation between Luis Galindo (France Éducation international) and Dr Jason Skeet, one of the lead authors of the British Council’s recent publication The current landscape of CLIL in primary education in France. Officially launched during the workshop, this report is the outcome of a two-year project to provide an accessible overview of current policy, provision and research relating to CLIL in French primary education. It includes recommendations for the British Council on how best to support the French government’s language strategy, with its focus on CLIL as a lever for language improvement, and identifies priority areas for further research that will help to shape our future work.
This was followed by a round-table discussion bringing together high-level experts to explore key issues, principles and approaches to CLIL implementation. Professor Do Coyle, one of the pioneers of CLIL practice, shared insights into the development of the approach across Europe and emphasised that CLIL teaching is fundamentally about responding to learners’ language needs, whether in language or subject classrooms. Isabelle Leguy, National Lead for France’s Modern Languages Plan at the Ministry of Education, outlined the government’s approach to CLIL, emphasising the intentional flexibility built into policy frameworks to enable ownership at school level. Sarah Breslin, Executive Director of the European Centre for Modern Languages and Head of Language Policy at the Council of Europe, discussed the challenges faced by education authorities when integrating language and content, while also underlining its potential as an effective strategy for language-responsive education. Finally, Dr Nayr Ibrahim (Nord University, Norway) drew attention to how translanguaging and other inclusive pedagogies can be integrated into CLIL practice to support content and language learning. This discussion underlined, above all, the importance for all teachers of attending to language in their teaching and of showing sensitivity towards their learners’ developing language needs.
