Modern Languages Education — Pandemic, Progression and an exciting CPD announcement…
In June 2021, Ofsted released a curriculum review of language education. The outlook? Language education is at a critical point, where language education is pivotal to the success of the government’s EBacc ambitions, yet it has also been in decline for the last two decades. Add a global pandemic on top of that, which has seen schools cancelling language lessons in favour of the core subjects, as well as a restricted capacity to travel, hear and speak other languages, and it sounds like a recipe for disaster for language education in the UK…
The Love of Languages
In early July, the TENsquared team ran a languages education roundtable with a group of teachers from across the UK to explore best practice and challenges in language education. It seems that teachers with a knowledge and love of languages really do push the importance of them in the classroom. We spoke to a teacher who had a passion for the Russian language. Each week, she taught her reception class a little bit of Russian and embedded it into their everyday routines e.g. answering the register, or asking to go to the toilet. For this teacher, languages are like keys to the rest of the world and offer endless opportunities for expanding children’s horizons to the world outside of their homes and classrooms.
Other teachers we chatted with reported that introducing basic phrases at KS1 really has really helped with boosting children’s confidence later down the line when language education becomes mandatory in Year 3. Having a bank of small phrases helps children to overcome any nervousness and trepidation around speaking a new language to embody more of a ‘can-do’ attitude.
How can we Support Unconfident Teachers?
On the flip side of that, though, are teachers who have little experience of languages and can feel very nervous about teaching it, therefore struggling to instil a love of languages in the children they teach. Lots of language schemes, including Twinkl’s PlanIt French and Spanish Schemes, offer audio clips and native voice overs to support teachers who are nervous around pronunciation.
Proper progression in languages is another important part of the challenge of supporting teachers. The Ofsted report highlighted that there was often little in the way of linguistic progression in primary schools. Instead, schools often focus on building the pupils’ stock of words rather than focusing on phonics, grammar and vocabulary of a modern language. Using a carefully planned out language scheme, which has progression built in, is a way that teachers can be confident in delivering the best language education.
Empowering teachers with language CPD is another way to improve teacher confidence, however, we’ve found that language CPD is often not a priority and gets pushed aside in favour of CPD for the core subjects. With this in mind, we’re running a short and manageable language CPD course which is packed with tips and tricks for the teachers out there who need a little confidence boost with languages. Please register your interest here.
So what of the future of languages?
Teacher empowerment in languages will be a great source of systemic improvement in language education. Upskilling the teachers of today in languages will raise the aspirations of children in language learning.
TENsquared is Twinkl’s Educational Research Network.
