Dd is dual French / British. She understands everything in French, has been reluctant to speak but improving. She has just gone into year 7 in a very large secondary offering 3 language options.
All parents were told all children would do french first then offered a second language at a later stage. The policy changed sometime after the close of applications for secondary last year but no one informed the parents of yr7 intake. As a result I didn’t discuss dd as a separate case with the school, just filled in the relevant information on the admissions form.
Dd was given french. All good or so I thought. Except I subsequently found out from parents some children were doing just Spanish, others Spanish and German, French and Spanish etc. I therefore queried this with the school and they told me language teaching had been cut and now children in the top set of English have 2 languages, all the rest one. This won’t change but because dd is an exceptional case the school is will offer dd 3 possibilities. Stick with french, change to just German or both Spanish and German. If she does either of the latter 2 I will have to teach her or get a tutor - either is possible.
For legal reasons (school is full) dd cannot change to another “stream” and will have to stay in this stream for yrs 7/8/9. So it’s a big decision. There are 3 streams and it is just bad luck she’s been put in the stream where french can’t be combined - I assume the other 2 can but am seeking clarification and left a message for the curriculum head.
I don’t want to go in all guns blazing but I’m mightily pissed off that the school didn’t just bang off an email to the feeder schools at the time of the policy change to ensure the children, who fall outside the norm would be catered for.
My feeling is that if she does both Spanish and German that will be heavy going and the school obviously agree. However she can drop Spanish at any time if it’s too heavy going and centre on German. The benefit of doing both however would be she can potentially change streams to french plus either / or if a child leaves and a space comes available. But idk at this stage if this could happen and I know dd wouldn’t want to change forms if that was the only well to make it work. She was very reluctant to go to this school (she didn’t get into her preferred school) and I don’t want to rock the boat with her.
Any advice for the way forward?
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School changed policy and didn’t inform parents intake yr7 - languages
48 replies
Mummyoflittledragon · 06/09/2019 09:11
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