School just axed DDs Nat 5 course

[MrsMattSantos]

And not just any Nat5 course, her favourite one. Aargh
We had no warning given if this - she just turned up for the first day back yesterday to be told the class was no longer going ahead.
It’s Italian, which is her favourite subject, and after years of not having a clue about what she might do after school she’d be starting to think she might do Italian at uni. But now she’s feeling like she’s had all her plans pulled away from her.
I know she can still study Italian at uni. without having done it at school, but given she’s so keen on it I want to try to support her to keep it going - but am not sure how to do this.
also not sure what we should be suing to school, when someone does finally get back to me.
it also does seem ridiculous to me that a largish high school is only offering its students one language at Nat 5 level. They can study three before that, but only sit exams in Spanish, it seems,
anyway, any advice would be gratefully received on what to do here…

Assume it’s because of poor uptake of the class to the point where they can’t justify running it.

Could you get her private/group lessons outside of school so she’s getting something?

Has the teacher left? Not enough kids want to do it to make it viable? It seems odd that the change has been made over the summer unless there was an unexpected reason - they should have finalised timetables at least on the last day of term!

I'll assume its more to do with the Italian teacher has left. To be fair there's probably not that many Italian teachers around.

It can't be to do with numbers theyve probably already started the new timetable before summer.

I think id encourage her to do Spanish if thats what school can offer. And use Italian as a hobby on Duolingo or similar

yes, will look at getting her some private tuition if we have to.
and it was a small class - but they did had it it when the new timetables came in at the start of June so she’s done a month of work in the class.
any other subject she picks now she will have missed a month of work in - but there’s not anything else she even wants to do

Don’t they have an agreement with another local school to let students access Italian? I know several areas do that with subjects that are not full.

she’s already doing Spanish, but wanted to do both. Teacher hasn’t left either…

I'd ask school about it.

But even if they do put it on since the teacher is still there. If she was to leave half way through the year or be off ill or anything it will be very hard for the school to find a replacement

A boy I went to school with taught himself higher Spanish on top of his 5 highers because he wanted to. Could you get her a tutor and ask the school to still facilitate the exam for her?

Esgoil and Edinburgh College do Nat 5 online courses. Not sure if they do Italian but worth checking in case she could do it through them.

esgoil might be an option @LaughingLemurso thanks for that
After three days of phoning I have now finally managed to speak to the school depute head, and it seems that the class is apparently too small to be viable after a couple of students dropped out after the exam results so they could resit courses.
but there’s school will look if esgoil will work and they are also not averse to us getting a tutor….
so fingers crossed something can work

Hopefully it will work out for her, especially since it's her favourite subject. A friend has done a different language with Esgoil and loved it.

Some colleges offer national 5’s and highers as evening classes or online learning.
Or they have school college programmes were a subject or an svq course can be done 2 afternoons a week in place of a subject choice at school.
Dd1 did a college courses in S5 as the options were rubbish in a column but her college course was a Friday afternoon so she was given study time in the blank
column at school.
Dd2 also did the same but as a column choice so went 2 afternoons a week.

Or another option is if a high school nearby offers the course she could go there for the one subject or join the class via google meet or zoom.

My DC did French at Nat5 and then Higher level without having any lessons at school. But they were allowed to take the exams at school. This meant that they could fit in another subject they wanted to do at school. DC learned the language by 1) going on language exchanges to France, and 2) having an online lesson once a week with a French person. We didn't attempt to find someone who was familiar with the Scottish syllabus, though there was some discussion with the tutor about what the syllabus involved. The priority was to learn French, and DC's method of learning put them way ahead of the children who took French at school and this resulted in good academic results.
So I'd recommend this approach - but going on language exchanges was an important element of it (DC absolutely loved the language exchanges). If you're not committed to the idea of language exchanges, you might need to organise more than one lesson a week. In your case you may need to find another school, or a tuition college, which will allow your DC to sit the exams. Alternatively, your DC could take a GCSE with one of the English correspondence course providers. But this may not be accepted by a university in the same way as a Higher would be, and I think that English A'levels are at a much higher level than Highers (in languages). There's a shortage of people applying to study languages at university, so if your DC learns Italian informally and doesn't tick all the exam boxes, she may well find that universities are flexible about that, and allow her to take Italian without doing it ab initio.