O papel da família e de organizações civis no ensino de português para crianças brasileiras

Abstract

Brazilian emigration became more evident in the 80s and United Kingdom is, in Europe, one of the countries with greater increase on numbers of Brazilian migrants. As a consequence, there is a large number of Brazilian children in the British educational system, in addition to the children from many other backgrounds. Independent of their competence levels in English, these children are enrolled in mainstream schools. In this paper, I discuss the British educational policies in relation to children of immigrant families. I also present a profile of the actions taken by Brazilian families in London in favour of the teaching of Portuguese to their children as well as a profile of some of the Brazilian community organizations which are active in the UK. I conclude with suggestions on how these organizations could work more effectively and urge for more involvement from Brazilian government in relation to the education of Brazilian children and adults who live abroad.