Languages at state schools - are these figures right?

[UnquietDad]

article here

17%? Seventeen percent? Surely not. Means our LA must be untypical - as far as I know, most of the state comps here have a languages department. It would be odd for them not to.

And one for the pedants: "despite them being no longer compulsory beyond the age of 14" should of course be "despite their...."

But comps are secondary schools. The article is stating that it is 17% of primary schools. Still low admittedly.

Oh sorry. Missed that...

THWACK.

You know, I'm sure the original version of that article didn't say "primary" in the sentence. I'm not usually that dim!!

I'm sure you're right UQD - both dh and I heard the 17% statistic on the news on Saturday morning, and both raised our eyebrows. We decided they must have meant that only 17% of secondaries made one MFL at GCSE compulsory for all students. Obviously we were wrong.

FWIW at our secondary - c.200 students per yr we have appalling take-up rates:
Current yr11 - 0 French, 10 German
Current yr10 - 11 French, 23 German

That's diabolical, roisin. Our school is obviously one of the 17% then, because virtually every child has to take a foreign language to GCSE. The only exceptions are those few who have been identified as needing a slightly different options path, usually a vocational one. So in my daughter's year of 280, I think at least 250 are doing one foreign language, with about a dozen taking two.

The article is definitely wrong - it's talking about how many PRIMARY schools offer languages to GCSE. Now as far as I'm aware, no primary school offers GCSEs...

That's what's wrong with it! of course!

Pretty certain 17% of primaries aren't offering a MFL at GCSE, G&T or no G&T!

x-post. How slow is my typing?

when did they drop compulsory languages at senior school ?

I seem to remember that recently they announced all primaries would have to teach languages - with the hope that switching kids on earlier would be more efective and more would opt to do languages later in their school life. Not sure where all these primary school teachers who are modern language experts are all hiding though !

That happened some time ago Throckenholt . And the primary provision is mostly not being taught by qualified teachers. It's being largely provided by TAs working three pages ahead of the class in Spanish, a beautiful language that is easy to teach to a low standard

This is just the same as removing a bus stop from a route and then cutting services because of falling demand.

I think this whole MFL issue is a cut-and-dried example of how our curriculum has dumbed down and become culturally impoverished.

It makes me all the more determined to get the dcs into a secondary school where a good range of MFL is offered.

I do wish we had standardised on Spanish as the first foreign language rather than French - it is so much easier for English speakers to get started on - and might actually boost confidence in ability rather than convincing kids that it is too difficult for them.

God knows how we would cope if we had to learn English as a foreign language !

It will seep back in, though - compulsory languages at primary are coming in.

Throckenholt - I remember that business about the primary schools - the actual working was that all primary schools should give pupils an "entitlement" to learning a language. That doesn't actually mean the school has to teach them. But I got very up in arms at the time (as a language professional myself) about Estelle Morris's wank idea - she was quoted as saying that native speaker parents (who obviously know how to teach their own language just by virtue of speaking it) or university lecturers ( who obviously have so much time on their hands) or students ( ditto the above two) could be roped in to help provide this entitlement.

We seem to have got into a vicious cycle with languages in this country: they are perceived as difficult - pupils aren't motivated - they are made non-compulsory - they are perceived as difficult - result: a country that is almost universally recognised as crap at languages and a shortage of people going forward to train as language teachers, so fewer pupils will get to learn them, and so it goes on.

Not that I know what the solution is .

Fluffyanimal, as a MFL graduate I saw red when Estelle Morris came out with that. So MFL in primary level, the time when children are at their most receptive to language acquisition, is not worth paying professional teachers for...
I learned feck all from the French/Spanish assistantes at secondary school, and none of them were any good at teaching except for one.

Oh yes, the continual assumption that a speaker of a language is a good teacher of it.. Before the requirement for a teaching qualification in FE came in, this was stopping a lot of FE/adult teachers from getting work! Places would use a native speaker because they were cheaper.

When I taught German I lost count of the number of times people said in a puzzled way "but you're not German", or "wouldn't it be better to learn it from a German person?"...

I learned French at primary school in the 1960s. We were taught phonetically and I can still remember it, unlike the O level French that followed. We found out recently it was a pilot scheme (it worked so I've no idea why it was dropped).

I worked as a TA in a very low ability High School (we have grammars) 10 years ago when languages were compulsory. All the time the kids were learning basic conversational phonetic French they enjoyed it, but the requirement was to move on to reading and writing it. These were kids who could barely read and write in English so were instantly turned off.

I think the way forward is to teach primary children phonetically and carry on with oral French at secondary except for those of average and above average ability who could then be extended by the written side. After all it is more important to be able to speak and understand spoken French than written in the grand scheme of things (and I say that as someone who had no difficulty at all with written French for exams but can't speak it at all )

We did French at primary school too, from second year to fourth year juniors (1977-80).

When I got to secondary school, though, we all started again at zero. So it was pointless. I sat and twiddled my thumbs for two years while listening to various grunting specimens reading:

"Ooo. Essst. Jeeen. Ill. Esst. Danns. Lur. Jarrr-dinn."

Our state comp let languages be chosen as an option. Therefore children can drop it all together at 14. Bit with this as DD is dropping both German and French. But there is not point in forcing a language option. Think they should have made one compulsory for the children who are doing well with them.

UQD, you have hit the nail on the head. There has been no joined-up thinking about this at all.

Dh had the same experience as you. He did French for three years at middle school, then went to secondary school at the age of 13 and had to start all over again, because not all the middle schools taught French. Oddly enough, he lost all his enthusiasm for the subject and ended up in the bottom set being entered for CSE rather than O'Level. (Luckily he got a Grade 1 for his CSE, which enabled him to go to University later...)

I am all for teaching children an MFL at Primary School. In fact, I'd introduce it at KS1, I wouldn't wait till KS2. But no-one has worked out where the people are going to come from to teach all these KS2 kids, nor has anyone thought about what will happen to them when they get to secondary school. Dd1 (in Year 3) is learning a bit of Spanish, because her HT happens to be bilingual, and this should be OK, because the secondary school she'll probably go to teaches French and German. So, she'll lose her Spanish (probably) but at least she won't be repeating what she's already done. But what would happen if her HT had been French instead of Spanish? She'd still have to start all over again at High School. And when languages become compulsory at KS2, each primary school is going to teach a different language, depending on staff available, so the kids are going to turn up at High School knowing a bit of Spanish/Italian/French/German/Mandarin/Double-Dutch/Whatever... at which point the High School cannot but completely ignore what they've done previously, because to try to take it into account would be impossibly unwieldy. I am not at all sure that we are then in any way better off than we were before.

Joined-up thinking (and really focused teacher-training) needed! (Ed Balls is my MP... I can feel an email coming on!!)

My DD loves languages but she is the ONLY student in her 6th form doing French & German, and only 3 pupils are taking French!

However, she would rather be doing something like Arabic and Mandarin as these are the sort of languages you need to get a decent job in languages these days!

DS is very lucky in that he is learning French, from a trainee teacher to be sure, but nevertheless someone who does know something about teaching. He is in year 2. He also learns Spanish outside school. I wonder what will happen if he goes back to start from scratch at secondary...

DH didn't do MFL beyond 14, which is really why he is so keen for ds to learn them early.

I think that 17% figure is wrong on the BBC news website, here's what the Guardian said about it on Saturday. These figures seem more likely:

In 2000 80% of all school students - from both the private and state schools - took a foreign language at GCSE, but that has now fallen to below 50%. The number of state schools where students are required to study a foreign language after 14 is now around 17%, the university said.

Milliways... I have some blurb for your dd. Keep forgetting to post it. Will be in office on Wednesday (am juggling work/kids atm, as no childcare this week) and will post it then.

It's not entirely true that you need more exotic languages to get a job using languages. There will always be a call for people who can speak European languages (thankfully... or I'm out of a job ). However, it's true that if you can speak Mandarin or Arabic there are a lot of openings out there for you. You can, however, usually start those languages from scratch at university. And having learnt one language well does make it easier to learn more, so I don't think that the importance of these more exotic languages means that it's less important to teach the languages of our European neighbours (and to teach them properly if at all possible) at school.

One of our local secondary schools (though not the one closest to me) is a Specialist Languages College. I was browsing on their website and found a whole series of elementary howlers in the French homework exercises. Things like (a propos of the weather): 'Il est beau'; 'A Corsica il pleut'; a whole series of sentences like this. Quite worrying!

No worries! She was at a Uni day yesterday where loads of Uni's had stalls so came home with bags of stuff. Rekindled her interest in a language degree as well

That's great news Milliways. Hopefully you still have my email address (if not, it'll be with the stuff I'm sending tomorrow) so if she has any questions (not necessarily about my subject) I can try to answer them. Both Arabic and East Asian languages are an option up here!

Quick hello to Ellbell. I've named changed and used to be Magdelainian, so you know if you see me round the boards.