French or Spanish in High School KS3

[TheLifeofMe]

When I was in high school we had to learn French and German. Then when it was time to decide to GCSEs to take you could choose which language or take both.

What happens now in high school? For the first two years do kids have to do french and Spanish?

TIA 😊

Depends on the school but they're normally forced to do 2 languages then choose one for GCSE

Depends on the school. Plenty sadly offer only one language in the school. Some offer two or three but in many of those students take one of the two/three. Most have no choice. Some schools offer one in yr 7 and the chance to pick up another in yr 8.

Locally we have examples of all three.

I would say what @HappiDaze says is the exception rather than the rule. I can’t think of any schools local to me where students are ‘forced’ to study 2 MFL then choose one for GCSE.

It's just going to depend on each school - there's no one size fits all. DD1 for example was allocated either French or Spanish at her school in year 7. No chance to change or learn the other, and free to drop it for GCSE. DD2 at another local school was allocated French in year 7, then German in year 8, and could have taken one, two or neither at GCSE. Schools are being pushed to get pupils through their EBacc which would include a language but most round here are happy to ignore the hit on EBacc numbers.

Finding language teachers is hard, and German is particularly so, so schools are limited by what they have the teachers to teach.

Where we lived the state secondaries did not offer a choice of MFL or much variety. None offered a classical language. It was the final nail in the coffin of a state education.

DS took: Latin, French and Mandarin at GCSE - Latin at A'Level and read Classics.

DD took: Latin, French and Spanish at GCSE - French at A'Level and Arabic formed a significant part of her degree. In her gap year, dd learnt BSL.

Both children are pretty fluent in French.

We happened to think that languages were important.

It depends what specialist teachers they have tbh but given a chiuve I would choose spanish as its the more widely spoken

Each school is different.
Dc2 and 3 did French and Spanish in y7/8.
Y9 chose to do 1 or both.
Then at gcse the top 50% academically take 1 or 2 languages, the bottom 50% can choose to do 1 as an extra gcse.
I think this has something to do with the baccalaureate.
Dc1 went to a different school where you chose a language in y7 and did that till gcse. The ones who struggled with english stopped at end of y7 and had extra English lessons.

Like pp have said, it depends on the school. I'm a secondary school languages teacher and have taught in lots of schools. Few offer German any more. The most common policy is to start with either Spanish or French in Y7, pick up a second in Y8 and then for GCSE choose to continue with either, both or neither. However, some schools now only offer one language. Some offer three. My school offers French, German and Spanish and Y7 start with all three, but that's very unusual indeed! It is a grammar school though.