to think this government hasn't got a clue about education- why should all children be made to take MFL at GCSE?

[LuluJakey1]

What is it with the ill-thought out education ideas this government has? Why should every child take a GCSE in MFL? It is not something many children enjoy or feel has relevance to them.

Why should a school not be able to be outstanding if it does not make all students take a GCSE in MFL?

If the MFL department can't see the value in teaching their subject, then it's no wonder the kids don't!

Kids see a lot of things as boring, unnecessary and difficult. However, they are not the best judges of what is good for them.

I'm a maths teacher, I have to teach any kid that is put in front of me, and they have to take a GCSE. I'm sure I'd prefer a nice little cushy number where only kids who opted to take the GCSE ended up in my classes, but allowing kids to drop maths because they don't fancy it wouldn't necessarily be the best course of action.

I HAVE answered your question. I have said (repeatedly) that I don't think that children should NECESSARILY have to take a GCSE in MFL. It therefore stands to reason that I think that all children should not necessarily have to take a MFL GCSE for a school to be outstanding.
But your arguments have raised many other issues besides, and I do think that there should be much more encouragement and value given to the teaching of MFLs and that children should take them up to the age of 16. I think the prevailing attitude to MFLs in this country stinks and needs to be addressed.
Your descriptions of how things are taught and the attitudes of the children you teach are extraordinarily sweeping. Many children dislike languages - many children don't. Many children dislike science, yet you seem to have no problem whatsoever with them being forced to study it. Why? Many children dislike studying Shakespeare, because they find the language archaic and think it's old-fashioned and therefore not relevant. I am delighted that all children have to study Shakespeare, and that their prejudices have to be overturned. The same should be happening for languages.
When you say I am looking for holes in what you are saying as if you are lying, do you mean because I looked at the manifesto? I was genuinely interested actually, and wanted to see what the recommendations were. I do think that your arguments are very weak and full of holes, but that wasn't why I looked at the manifesto.

It's an interesting question and DH & I were discussing something similar earlier today.

DD's school asks students to choose a language as it believes in an all-round education. This doesn't matter to us as DD's strongest subjects are MFL anyway.

But as part of the all-round education she will have to choose a subject such as art, graphics, textiles, which she doesn't want to do and is no good at. I was complaining that it's a waste of GCSE if she doesn't want to do them and that these are the kinds of subjects that you need to have a talent for.

This is how people must feel when their DC has no aptitude for MFL whatsoever. So I get how people feel about this. I don't know what the answer is though.

Noble, you teach a subject that children do from their first day at school, every day, that there is a huge investment in cpd for teachers in, that is high priority for teacher training, whete teachers are gien large bursaries to train in, schools pay higher TLRs in, is valued as a cross- curricular skill, is not rote learning, that children use every day, can learn by exploring and play, is hammered by employers as one of the two most important subjects, parents value.

Imagine teaching one that is the opposite of all those things.

If you still face disengaged students dspite all the advantages Maths has as a subject, imagine what MFL teachers would face if every student had to take it at GCSE? Stop being disingenuous. You understand exactly the point. I have been a Head of English in a comp and know how much of a struggle it can be to engage all students and my subject has the same status as yours.

Ok. So not all kids should have to do a GCSE language because the GCSE is rubbish (is anyone from an exam board reading this so you can go away and do something about it?)

But they should absolutely have to learn a language in a useful way, with a useful qualification, until 16. So what we need is someone to come up with a qualification that teaches you useful language and means that after 4-5 years learning a language at secondary school you can go to the country and make yourself understood in a meaningful way. Surely it can't be that difficult?

chica - I had the same issue when DS1 was told he'd have to drop a language (which he loves) in order to be able to concentrate on doing all three sciences which he hates. And I think it's ridiculous that your DD is being forced to do a GCSE in Art, Graphics or Textiles.

Lulu I agree with your points entirely.

I loved MFL at school and their study and benefits have added interest to my life. But I am not bilingual and my European MFL have been of no interest to any British employer I've had, all of whom have had either locally based clients or operated in "English speaking industries" - their term.

It has been the maths and science qualifications I gained at school that have enabled me to work. With a heavy heart I came to the conclusion with my dyslexic son it was not worth continuing with school MFL. If he has a reason to learn in future I will support him. I would say we are not being narrow minded but acting on real life logic. Of course Luxembourg do lots of languages, so would I if I lived in Luxembourg- for a start we could practice real life language use every weekend!

Theoretician : Exactly. My DH failed his MFL at school but learned to speak another language by living abroad for a while; it is naive to say every intelligent person can pass an exam in MFL.

Personally I think Biology underlies a lot of the issues a citizen should be able to think about today so I'd prefer that to be compulsory!

Lulu the bursary to train as a languages teacher at secondary is almost the same as that to train as a maths teacher. getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/bursaries-and-funding The entry requirements to be a maths teacher are lower than that of a languages teacher. The reason for that is because not many people want to teach languages, but hardly anyone at all who can teach maths wants to. If languages were a compulsory league table measure then it might start getting a higher profile in schools and maybe more money too.

Kids have been taught maths throughout primary school, that gives them plenty of time to have been disengaged and pissed off at it well before I see them in secondary. The amount of parents who say 'I was never any good at maths' is also an issue in putting kids off.

I actually taught Y7 German for a while. The kids were no more pissed-off and disenchanted than my maths classes. If they are sick of it by Y9, then that's an issue secondary teachers can address themselves. Secondary maths teachers can have very little effect on what goes on in primary.

I learned phonetic French at primary school over 40 years ago. Apparently it was an experiment. I remember that primary French far more than the O level French I slogged through at Secondary.

My 8 yo DD is learning French at school. Unfortunately she is being taught by an ordinary teacher who clearly has no clue about pronunciation, as a lot of what she is coming out with is completely wrong.

We sent our middle child to a French nursery. He went for a year and by the time he went to school he was fluent in French. BUT we couldn't keep it up and although we got in some French TV stations to try to help, obviously the English channels won and without being able to provide the immersion he lost it all. Foreign children at least have the impetus of wanting to see American shows and films to keep them interested in learning English.

I was always considered a bright child, and was in top sets, so I always thought learning languages was something everyone should do. Then I became a TA in a sink secondary, supporting the lowest classes, who all had to take French. First term was great; phonetic learning, and everyone was enthusiastic. Second term they insisted on reading, writing, grammar etc. In a class full of kids who could barely cope with English not one of them could manage it. In fact we had 2 pupils who in Y7 couldn't even read, so how were they supposed to cope with reading French?!

Language needs to be taught phonetically to very young children by people who are either native speakers or are at least fluent in the language. Then it needs to be kept up.

Personally, I think all children should do English, Maths, at least one science, MFL, History, Music, Art, Geography and PE from Reception up to GCSE. I am sickened by the lack of music in schools. At least some attempt to teach children to read music should made throughout primary.

As a Head of MFL, I am probably understandably in favour of languages at GCSE. Yes, there are some cases where it is not appropriate but these are the exceptions rather than the norm.
I do not expect my students to leave at 16 being experts in French, German or Spanish any more than I would expect a child with a Physics GCSE to join a nuclear research team or one with a Biology GCSE to carry out an operation. GCSE is the start of the journey, not the end, and is a building block for those who wish to pursue the subject.
I also believe that all students should experience a broad and balanced curriculum. That means not just focusing on science or arts subjects. Studying a mixture of these shows that the student is adaptable, can use the different areas of their brain, and can manage outside of their comfort zone at times.
For me, the benefits of language learning are about more than chatting with Pierre about what you do in your free time. The links between higher register English and the common MFL are undeniable, and the study of these enables the student to have a stronger command of their own language. Through teaching grammar in the MFL class room, students understand their own better.

Jux, I more upset by the lack of music in some reception classes than in KS4.

I know for a fact there are reception classes where almost no music goes on.

That's the ideal sauvignon, but it did not occur with my DH or son who are clearly not so adaptable to achieve reading and writing in a foreign language in a few hours per week. They would have been better going over basic written English skills.

My child, who was born and educated in Switzerland until she was 15, is fluent in English, French and Greek. She got an A* in her English IGCSE at the age of 14, considers French her mother tongue and can communicate well in Greek, her father's language, though she can't read it. I am English and we speak English at home, though also speak French with her as necessary.
So I'm afraid I think most of you are talking rubbish about second and third languages. Give the child the tools and they will benefit from them.

*Sorry, she can read Greek but can't write it. She is not a prodigy, by the way, she's just had the opportunities and been exposed to languages. She also speaks Spanish, having travelled in Spain and South America during her gap year.

The key to a proper understanding of English is found through learning another language. That language can be Latin or Ancient Greek although a Modern Language has other advantages. Why?

Well you need the ability to escape from your own language to gain a proper perspective. Along the lines of not being able to see the wood for the trees.

Just as we never realised how beautiful the Earth was until we could escape its orbit and look at it from a new perspective.

You will never truly understand grammar or appreciate vocabulary until you get that different perspective.

To paraphrase 'They little of English know, who only English know'.

As an outsider, the most interesting feature of this discussion is how narrow the UK education system is. It just seems seems wrong to me that 13 year olds should have to make decisions about dropping subjects which could have long term ramifications for their further education.

My DD is doing her French school leaving diploma ("brevet") this year, for which she is required to study twelve compulsory subjects, including two MFL, with Latin as an additional option!

Mistigri, it's been like that in England since I was 13, nearly 50 years ago! Shocking! Which is why I'm glad my child eventually was abe to follow the IB curriculum, though as a result, at the moment she is bemoaning the lack of opportunity to study diverse subjects at English universities. She is studying Humanities and Social Sciences but would like to add Maths and Spanish to the mix, to no avail :(

Some of us are saying whatever our own experience of loving language learning, a few hours in an MFL classroom in the UK does not "provide the tools" for quite a few of our students.

I hated science at school, loved languages, and now work in pharmaceuticals, where bizarrely, my science GCSE knowledge is not relevant or useful (the real scientists here are all PhD and above), but my MFL degree absolutely is, and has opened a lot of doors for me. My point being, that very few people know with any certainty at 14, what will enable up being useful in their later life, and what won't be. Therefore the point of GCSEs is surely to turn out well-rounded individuals who have experienced a broad curriculum, and have as many options open to them as possible as they enter adulthood.

Once we go beyond maths and English, which we all agree are more or less necessary to function in society, most of the other subjects, including sciences, are really about learning different kinds of analysis and application of knowledge in context. A lot of GCSE 'knowledge' is fairly arbitrary in nature (naming he parts of a flower, knowing about medicine in the middle ages, or being able to describe how you like singing but don't like football in a foreign language, are all things that are mostly useless to lots and lots of people, for example), but it's the processing required to do those things and apply context that is important. I don't think GCSE languages are any less important than sciences in that respect.

Mistigri, I agree wholeheartedly with you.

So what do people think is the value of the mfl that makes it so valuable? Because for native english speakers it isn't a significant increase in income - around 2% for americans, not sure if anyone has done the numbers for the UK yet. And rarely do people report that they are confident in a language they learnt at school. So what is it?
I am learning a mfl, i hope to be close to fluent by the end of the year - i absolutely love it - almost to the point of obsession, but at school it was bloody awful! Most adults in America who would describe themselves as confident in another language have been self taught as adults. I wonder what school does....i among others hated PE, and rediscovered the joy later in life. I was crap at sports and crap at languages - a whizz at maths and science but now i passionately enjoy both exercise and languages. Is it school and exams that suck the joy out of learning?

Good point, well made, Loafline.

Work wise, my language degree was met with relative indifference at interview, but it has ended up opening doors for me at work despite that. I have been offered secondment where I was the best fit, part of which was my language, and it has helped raise my profile at work so has indirectly affected my moves up the career ladder.

On a more practical level, my understanding of how languages work helps me to understand and break down names of diseases, drugs, etc, and means in a multinational industry where communication is key, I can help ensure that the work we do translates well. As well as being practically useful for all the business travel I do.

Learning a second language, unless you are blessed to be in a bi-lingual family, is a skill. If it is well taught it should equip you with the skill of knowing how to learn any other language. Who knows what circumstances you will meet in life.

If you are ever a student in an adult language class it is always painfully obvious who has never learnt a language before. I am referring to beginners here. That is a skill that should be learnt at school.

Unfortunately, because of the pressure to achieve grades the last thing some schools care about is actually teaching the subject. So the meaningless rote learning has taken over. Regurgitating only partly understood text is not the way to teach anyone to learn a language merely to pass an exam. This is in large part why so few have the confidence to carry on to A Level. They know that they don't know properly what they have been awarded an A or A* for.

Hopefully the hew GCSE specifications will go at least part way to ending this charade.