The Chief Minister and Minister for Education today launched the Gibraltar College Language School. Starting next month, the Gibraltar College will offer classes in Spanish, French and Italian to pupils aged between 6 and 16 years of age.

Courses will cater for a range of levels and abilities with the aim of developing pupils' abilities to speak, listen, read and write in a foreign language. These classes will be held at the College from 4pm till 5 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The aim of this venture is to promote bilingualism in Gibraltar’s young people and to build language skills in order to that pupils have the skills necessary to communicate with people of other nationalities and other cultures.

Minister for Education, the Hon Dr John Cortes said, "Studies have shown that language skills help learning abilities across all areas and, in adults, bilingualism has been shown to delay the onset of dementia by around five years. Gibraltarians gain many economic and social advantages from their bilingualism and we should do everything possible to foster our community’s linguistic skills. I am very pleased that this is the first new initiative I have launched as Minister for Education, and I thank my predecessor Gilbert Licudi, and the team at the Department and the College, for their excellent work in this area."

Enrolment will take place at the Gibraltar College on the following dates:

Monday 9th - Wednesday 18th January 2017 between 9 am and 3 pm.

Application forms can be obtained from Gibraltar College reception or downloaded from the Collage website www.gibraltarcollege.org

Enrolment will be on a first come basis and classes will run provided there is sufficient demand.