Consequences of Bilingual Education in Primary and Secondary Schools in the Madrid Region (Comunidad de Madrid)

Knowledge of a foreign language has beneficial consequences in all realms of life, from individual cognition to the wealth of countries. The consequences of knowledge of English, the world lingua franca of business and culture, as a foreign language are particularly significant. Improving the level of English of citizens is therefore a major concern for education authorities, and interventions pursuing this aim are increasingly common. We evaluate the outcomes of such an intervention deployed in the Madrid Region during the past decade, namely a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programme that uses English as the vehicular language, in primary and secon-dary schools. We report a series of mixed effects models based on the results of the CDI tests (Conocimientos y Destrezas Indispensables - basic knowledge and skills) taken between 2008-2009 and 2014-20145, as well as the Pisa for Schools tests taken in 2009 and 2013, and conclude that the introduction of bilingual education in Madrid has not been detrimental to content-learning performance in schools.