KS2 French - is this normal?

[BreatheAndFocus]

DC has just started Y4. Short background: she did a year of French in Y3 yet didn’t recognise basic French conversation, eg I asked her her name and she had no idea what I was saying. Even when I modelled the question and answer, there was no gleam of recognition at all. I had no idea what they did. When I asked DC she said they learnt the colours.

Now at the start of Y4, her new teacher has sent home a course plan for each subject for this half of term, including French. But the French plan is very short and very weird. I covers two not especially common or useful French phonemes, that’s all. No conversation, no mention of topics like shopping, travel or anything, just this strange phoneme thing. It reminded me of phonics in Reception a bit and seemed to bear no resemblance to any French course I’ve ever seen. I’m so disappointed.

Last year, apart from ascertaining that the class hadn’t been taught the basics - saying your name and asking/answering how you are - the only piece of work I saw was a worksheet that had very obscure items of clothing on (think ski goggles, think ear-muffs) that DC had had to colour in and draw arrows on. I get the impression this sheet was printed off at random (Ooh, look - clothing!) as DC didn’t recognise or know any everyday clothing items at all and said they hadn’t been taught them.

So…..what’s your KS2 child doing in French? Are they following a course? Can they speak/understand some basic French? Is this strange, rubbishy French ‘teaching’ normal? I did look at the National Cuuriculum but that implied they’d be learning the kind of thing I was expecting them to learn.

Yes, I’m going to speak to the school about it, but I’d be interested in your experiences as to what’s normal. IMO, this is poor.

Very normal. I remember knowing about 20 flavours of icecream and not being able to have a basic conversation when I was younger. My y2 child last year did numbers 1-10 (badly) and ‘what is your name?’

I did a language at degree level ab initio. It was taught so differently. It was hard core grammar and verb conjugation first, vocabulary after. Now I suspect there is a reason they don’t teach kids that way (they’d likely be bored) but it was effective. Weirdly though I remember a lot of my primary French vocab so something must have sunk in.

You might find this article helpful in explaining the policy into practice gap: https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2022.2106287.

It’s called: Primary foreign languages national curriculum expectations in England: implications for practice from the Ofsted curriculum research review for languages and the 24 languages subject inspections

I felt very sorry for the teachers that taught my son's KS2 class French. They weren't subject specialists and were of course trying their best but there were 5 native French speakers on the class, must have been very intimidating for them

Mine is year 7 but did French in year 4 and 6 (Spanish in 3 and 5) and in both languages did greetings/numbers/colours/food vocab. It was basic but gave enough to capture their interest ready for secondary.

Here’s the conclusion, which might explain what you’re seeing.

The National Curriculum (DfE Citation2013) requires high standards of teaching and learning in foreign languages. However, since FL became a statutory, it has been difficult for most primary schools to develop their curriculums given the well-documented issues of staffing, funding, time, and high-stakes testing in the core subjects. This is felt even more acutely in small primary schools. More recently, the challenges of Covid-19 have placed even more demands on schools: from feeding pupils, providing mental health support for children and families and delivering a ‘catch-up’ curriculum.

The practice of the FL teacher who participated in this research study was high and met the requirements of the Ofsted guidance. However, it is her professional biography and working arrangements that enabled this practice. She is not an ‘average’ primary teacher, working in an ‘average’ way.

By illuminating the FL teacher’s practice in detail, as cross-referenced with the Ofsted (Citation2021) guidance, it is hoped that light is shone on to what teachers and schools are being asked to deliver, without further funding, training, support, guidance or increased primary FL teachers.

There are structural and systemic issues with FL teaching and learning in English primary schools, which cannot simply be augmented by demanding more from teachers and raising the bar for FL teaching and learning. Government policy needs to address the staffing of FL in primary school, if their aim of progression in a single language across KS2 is to be realised. Alternatively, other curriculum models should be considered which do not require high levels of primary FL specialist knowledge.

I'm a secondary MFL teacher by trade, but spent a few years as a peripatetic MFL teacher in primary schools. You are right that it is a box-ticking exercise. Most primaries still seem to have their MFL 'taught' by the normal class teacher who may remember a smattering of their high school French if you're lucky. It often involves just chucking a worksheet at them tbh.

Even when primary schools have a decent, well-qualified specialist doing it, in my experience they mostly just regard it as their PPA cover and don't really care what you teach as long as you can be relied on to keep the class occupied.

The thing is... you have to start them from scratch in Y7 anyway, because you can't guarantee which language they'll have done at primary or whether they'll have done it in a remotely sensible way.

I was a Year 5/6 teacher and taught French lessons despite me not speaking French. We followed a scheme on Language Angels which and studied things such as the weather (including directional language).
Fortunately for me, the Year 4 teacher had a degree in French so the children came to me with a good level of understanding because of him, but as I can’t speak French, those lessons were some of the worst I taught. I sought help and was told there “wasn’t time” and to instead use the prerecorded audio clips on Language Angels, and use the associated worksheets (which had answer sheets for me to mark from).

In spite of the schools regarding it as a box-ticking exercise, I actually loved teaching primary MFL. The kids were hugely enthusiastic and I could design my own curriculum. When I did some supply in the local secondaries, it was great to see how many of the kids I'd taught in primary carried on to GCSE Spanish or French. It's a real shame how unjoined-up and poorly-executed the whole thing is for most kids!

I genuinely don’t think it’s that important. If it’s important your kids need a second language then you need to teach them or have them take extra curricular classes. There are lots of children in year 3/4/5 that are struggling to keep on top of the essential curriculum. Is it worthwhile taking time out of key subjects to do this? At the end of the day anything you teach them at this age will be easily absorbed in y7, I don’t know anyone who said ‘I did so much better in my secondary education language gcse because I had a a basic conversation in french in primary school!’

The British are historically really bad at languages. Kids in other countries seem to learn them much faster.

It's just not that important at primary level.

I didn't even study french at secondary level. I did Spanish and German. I hardly know any french yet I've been designated the subject leader.
I give it a good go, but honestly the kids hardly remember it.

There's too many other priorities in primary at the minute. We'd love to spend more time and energy on subjects like French, music, art etc but honestly we're too busy trying to teach kids to read, write and carry out basic maths with ever reducing resources and finances.

Schools have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

It's a tick box exercise at primary school, it varies so much.

At their new school, my DDs are doing a whopping 15 minutes of Spanish per week. I am not expecting much!

The British are historically really bad at languages. Kids in other countries seem to learn them much faster.

There are very good reasons for that though. It's not as if Brits have brains that are any less capable of learning languages.