To date, information sessions have been given by the project leaders to participating schools at 24 venues nationwide. A total of 352 project teachers have also participated in 33 intensive inservice days organised by the project leaders. Some 113 evaluation forms have been returned from the participants in the inservice days. Ninety three declared the sessions "very helpful" and 20 said they were "helpful".
The number of participating schools in September 1998, was 271. Seven schools have dropped out since the start of the project. There are now 266 participating schools. This figure includes two schools that have recently joined for Italian.
A total of 1.5 hours' tuition is allowed for each individual 5th and 6th class participating in the project. Some of this time can be spent on teaching a small part of a largely skills-based area of the curriculum, for example, Art or P.E., through the target language.
The number of children participating in language classes is as follows: French: 9,644; German: 4,456; Spanish: 3,586; Italian: 1,243.
