The first Anglo-Portuguese school in England is on track to open in London, UK, in September 2020.
Parents keen to enroll reception-age children can start doing so from November.
Situated south of the Thames in Wandsworth, it’s a project that received draft approval by the British government three years ago. But the issue of finding the right site has dragged on till now.
Pending final approval, the plan is to take over a building attached to South Thames College on Wandsworth High Street, and start ‘slowly’, building up from reception class and reaching up to 420 children.
Say reports, when it was first announced in 2016, demand for places was three times the capacity of the first classes to be opened.
The school will become integrated in the system of ‘free schools’, which doesn’t mean the education is free, but implies that the school enjoys a degree of autonomy at the same time receiving State support.
Says the blurb now online (click here), the ethos of the Anglo-Portuguese School of London is to give pupils the ability “to learn to communicate fluently in two of the five most spoken languages globally, while also acquiring the skills necessary to cooperate, learn and interact with each other and the world”.
Lessons will be in both languages, taking children eventually from reception class (age 4) to year 7 (age 11).
Said Regina Duarte, coordinator of Portuguese language teaching in UK, the choice of London came as a result of the high numbers of Portuguese-speaking people living south of the Thames – not just Portuguese nationals but Brazilians and Angolans as well.
