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Multilingualism lies at the heart of educational policies adopted in most European Union countries. Knowledge of foreign languages now forms a significant part of the agenda concerning equality of educational opportunity. These policies are based on the premise that foreign languages help individuals in their professional and private life, combating poverty and social exclusion. In this paper, we present the education policies in relation to foreign languages in three European Union countries, Germany, Spain and Greece in order to examine whether they have been influenced by the equality agenda. We also present the results of a research study the aim of which was to investigate lower secondary education students' views and attitudes toward the teaching of foreign languages. Students seem to accept the official rhetoric regarding the beneficial outcomes of foreign languages. We conclude that multilingualism can contribute to the reduction of social class inequalities, as they can offer to all students, regardless of socioeconomic background, the opportunity to overcome obstacles and succeed in the education and employment field.

This article deals with the shadow education system of private tutoring which contributes to the reproduction of social class inequalities, focusing on the Greek public secondary education system. It presents a literature review of the issue and the findings of an empirical qualitative and quantitative research that aimed at examining the causes of the students' massive resort to private supplementary tutoring for learning the English language, despite the fact that English is taught at school. The study also set out to examine the relationship between students' socioeconomic background and resort to private supplementary tutoring and the relationship between socioeconomic background and knowledge of the English language as attested by official certifications. Research findings indicate that the widely spread resort to private supplementary tutoring has a negative impact on the teaching of English in Greek public lower secondary education. Using Bourdieu's cultural reproduction theory, we argue that private supplementary tutoring makes closer the relationship between social class, familial cultural and economic capital and educational outcomes. Thus, upper and middle class students are at an advantage, since they can move to the labour market with valued educational qualifications that enhance their occupational prospects. Finally, we discuss educational measures to address the problem.

The widening of participation in higher education in recent decades has been heralded as a means toward the reduction of social class inequalities in higher education. Research findings indicate, though, that simply increasing the number of people attending higher education does not mean that social inequalities have been substantially reduced. The mass expansion of higher education has existed alongside a differentiated and stratified higher education. Students from more privileged socioeconomic backgrounds usually study in prestigious higher education institutions and departments which offer more ambitious occupational trajectories, while those from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds usually attend lower status institutions and courses of study. Using official quantitative data, in this article we explore the correlation between familial cultural capital and distribution in higher education in Greece. The research findings show that the Greek higher education sector is differentiated, since students with parents who are higher education graduates are overrepresented in prestigious higher education departments and courses of study. Based on the research findings, we argue that initiatives to reduce social class inequalities in higher education need to tackle the issue of social class stratification in higher education and the unequal representation of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds in prestigious fields of study.

Multilingualism lies at the heart of educational policies adopted in most European Union countries. Knowledge of foreign languages now forms a significant part of the agenda concerning equality of educational opportunity. These policies are based on the premise that foreign languages help individuals in their professional and private life, combating poverty and social exclusion. In this paper, we present the education policies in relation to foreign languages in three European Union countries, Germany, Spain and Greece in order to examine whether they have been influenced by the equality agenda. We also present the results of a research study the aim of which was to investigate lower secondary education students' views and attitudes toward the teaching of foreign languages. Students seem to accept the official rhetoric regarding the beneficial outcomes of foreign languages. We conclude that multilingualism can contribute to the reduction of social class inequalities, as they can offer to all students, regardless of socioeconomic background, the opportunity to overcome obstacles and succeed in the education and employment field. Article visualizations: