Impact of the Madrid CLIL bilingual program on student achievement in primary and secondary education

Abstract

This article evaluates the Madrid bilingual program, implemented in half of the primary and secondary schools using the CLIL method, where several subjects are taught in English. We compare academic outcomes between bilingual and non-bilingual students using Propensity Score Matching to address the nonrandom distribution of students. The data comes from a competence evaluation conducted in Madrid in 2019 for all students in the final year of primary education (6th grade) and secondary education (10th grade). The results show that students from bilingual schools improve their English without significantly reducing their performance in other subjects. The improvement in English level is very high in primary education but decreases in secondary education, and there is a relative loss of competencies in the subject of geography and history taught in English. This fact explains why the Madrid government has recently prohibited the teaching of Spanish history in English as part of its bilingual program.