Trilingualism (Spanish, English and Basque) in the educational system of the Basque country

The research presented here aims to show the results obtained in Spanish, Basque and English languages for a bilingual community - the Basque Country (in which two official languages coexist) - and in which a bilingual school education system has been established with three linguistic Models and classified as A, B and D (as the letter C is not normally used in Basque). These Models depend on the greater or lesser presence of Basque and Spanish, both as languages through which studies are learnt as well as vehicular languages. Although what is involved here is not a longitudinal study, data has been gathered over a four-year period (2000-2003) in order to verify that the results are stable on a yearly basis. Also requiring to be verified was whether the possible differences arising amongst pupils between the distinct linguistic Models were the same for three different age groups (12, 14 and 16 corresponding to three different school grades). Given the nested structure of the data, hierarchical linear models (HLM) have been employed for the statistical analysis of the same. The results obtained confirm that the greatest differences are in Basque between pupils in the different Models, while with Spanish and English the differences are less.