Teaching Languages at Primary School

[MoSmithy]

My DC's school does not teach any languages, should they be?

I seem to remember starting to learn French when I was at primary school.

The Labour government brought in a policy that MFL (modern Foreign Languages) should be taught from age 7. The Tories soon scrapped that. I think there is a lot of variation in this, and for example our school has a Spanish teacher come in through the local secondary school, and teach from reception. but this is just luck.

Yes, this year it became compulsory.

Oh, it had passed me by that the teaching of MFL is now 'advised'.

That's rather sad, considering it was dropped at GCSE. Not a bright future for languages for this generation.

It should be 'available' at Key Stage 2. It should also be 'available' at Key Stage 4.

Whether schools choose to interpret that as having weekly lessons for everyone from age 7 upwards, or just from age 10, or just have an after-school French club for a handful of kids, is up to them.

In secondary school, it has usually been taken to mean that languages are still offered as GCSE choices, but are not a compulsory choice (e.g. at my school if you'd previously been doing French and German, you could pick one to drop and one to carry on. If you'd only been doing one language, you had to stick with it.). Because they're seen as 'hard work' compared to other subjects, the numbers of GCSE pupils choosing to take languages has dropped dramatically in recent years.

As long as children get some exposure to a FL then the school is doing their job.
In dcs case, their class teacher will teach them some vocabulary....and that's about it.

Ours does French and Spanish quite sporadically.
I really hope as he moves up through school it'll become a more regular thing.
Have you asked them?

Yes, Mena ZoVut, it's sad, isn't it. I was so pleased that my children would be doing it from 7, and that therefore standards at secondary would be higher too. It is interesting that their status is changing in secondary schools, giddy pickle, I didn't know about that, but I think that the role of the local secondary school in providing MFL for its feeder primary schools may become more important if they want to achieve results in MFL

My eldest daughters done French and Spanish since starting the juniors 2 yr ago. I believe she does 1hr per week in each subject. She enjoys it and has picked up quite a bit.