The paper presents the results of European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC), which took place in 2011, in the field of in-service teacher training in European countries that participated in the survey. The main objective of ESLC was to gather information on foreign language knowledge among students at the end of ISCED2 or at the beginning of ISCED3 in participating educational systems. The study included 53.000 students from 16 educational systems in 14 participating countries. In each of the educational systems two most commonly taught foreign languages of the five official languages of the European Union (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) were tested. Each student was tested in one of the two tested languages in two of the three language skills (listening, reading, writing), and had to complete a background questionnaire. In addition, principals and teachers of foreign languages at the sampled schools were included in the survey too. Approximately 2.500 principals and 5.000 teachers were included in the survey.

Principals and teachers from the sampled schools answered a questionnaire on the environment in which they work and teach. Principal Questionnaire examined schools’ characteristics, schools’ teaching staff, in-service training for the teachers, schools’ curriculum for foreign languages, schools’ resources; whereas Teacher Questionnaire focused on languages included teachers speak, teachers’ initial training, teachers’ qualifications, teachers’ current employment and possibilities of in-service training. As we can see, both questionnaires included questions on language in-service training, which were focused on options of in-service training language teachers have, the topics of in-service trainings that are available for them, the financial incentives teachers and schools get from different institutions, etc.

Therefore, we wanted to investigate, under what conditions the language teachers participate in in-service training and how often these teachers attend in-service training. The results are presented by country. Consequently, main research questions are:

• which countries have better conditions for teachers’ participation in in-service training;
• which topics of in-service training are the most popular among language teachers;
• which are the financial incentives teachers and schools get for in-service training;
• which teachers are more likely to participate in in-service training by gender, by age, by school environment (rural/urban), by attained education, by country;

To summarize, the objective of the paper is to detect those country and school policies which provide most support for in-service training of language teachers. Moreover, we aim to provide a profile (age, gender, school environment etc.) of the language teacher that is most likely to participate in in-service training overall and by country.

European Commission (2012). First European Survey on Language Competences: Final Report. Brussels: European Commission. European Commission (2012). First European Survey on Language Competences: Technical Report. Brussels: European Commission.