School being difficult about language choices for my daughter

[trefusis22]

Does anyone have experience or advice regarding how to get a school to allow your child to take the language choices we would like them to make? Ds is Italian and my daughter already studying this out of school doing gcse early. School asked and we responded about any pre gcse language choices although they don't guarantee them. We wrote in in good time and requested Spanish as good chance daughter is going to do languages going forwards and it's a good match to the Italian. School have responded saying we have no choice and she is down to do German. It's totally random and we do not get to choose!

This doesn't make sense to us and school will not meet us and say their decision is binding.

What rights do we have - is there a duty of care for the school to take our daughters future language ambitions into account?

Any experience on this / helpful info gratefully received. Thank u

No wonder there are problems with kids taking up languages if the languages are being chosen for them. Interest in a language or culture is essential - especially for teenagers.

At the risk of sounding cynical I bet that the OP's daughter is generally well behaved, compliant and academically well achieving. The type of student that is best to have in a german class. And this in addition to timetabling could have been a factor. It is nonsense that teachers don't get any input into class lists and it is totally random.

If I was the OP I'd be pissed off. Also as a science teacher I would shudder at the thought of biology-choosing students being forced to do physics. Obviously entirely hypothetical but an analogus and nightmare situation.

It is nonsense that teachers don't get any input into class lists and it is totally random.
Our HOD has limited say as so much is already decided before the lists come to us. So we only have flexibility as long as the classes are blocked off similarly (e.g. student a and student b have the same blocking). We can't just say 'I'm cherry picking the following students' (and it would be wrong to do that. If anyone is happy for staff to cherry pick and make allowances for 'good' students with engaged parents then they should also be fine witj staff saying 'i want Child X moved out my class because they have a reputation for being badly behaved'.)

At KS3 our class groups are drawn up to account for:
Balance of gender
Range of ability (we teach broadly mixed other than nurture/SEN groups - and yet still have people whine about their child being in the wrong set)
Allocation of TAs to children who have specified hours
Mix of SEND
Generally good balance of characters e.g. so one person doesn't get a group of all the known characters (though it happens)
Check blocking against practical subjects as the groups differ as thry are smaller classes.
We take preferences for y7 entry for MFL but can't guarantee it. It is what it is.

Sometimes if there is a SEND need then we do our very best to make it work (e.g. I have taught a child for 4 years because the child has complex needs, I have a good relationship with home and the stability is ideal for that child. However, if it didn't fit then it wouldn't have happened)

It's pre-gcse. I have a number in my tutor group who would rather be doing Spanish than French but that's how it rolls. We offer 3 languages, they were the first year we trialled Spanish (because we hired a teacher who could also offer it) so with one Spanish teacher there was only a couple groups offered it at first. It's just life.

Maybe it would be better to offer fewer languages. You could avoid the issue totally then.

Or maybe we're increasing our MFL offer because that's what our students and parents want and when we recruited a teacher who also offered Spanish as well as the 2 we already offered, we saw an excellent opportunity.

But yeah, we shouldn't look at enhancing our curriculum over time in case a few people don't like the fact they won't get their way.

maybe we're increasing our MFL offer

but you're not increasing it if you choose a language for a year 7 and don't let them take up any others.

There is no value to my ds that his school offers others French and German, when he can only do Spanish. That is not an enhancement.

In that situation, no but that isn’t the situation the OP is in, Iprefer

Sorry, Maisy that comment wasn’t aimed at your post and the tone didn’t come across at all. It was in no way a serious suggestion.

RafaIsTheKingOfClay
Ah right. I take back my sarcatic reply.

That's the problem with MN soemtimes.

We had exactly this situation a few years ago. I just kept emailing and calling up the chain. Teacher,'Head of Languages, Head of Year etc. When DD returned to school in the September, she walked into the German class and was told that she'd been moved to Spanish! The school never confirmed this verbally or in writing to me or apologised for the way they had dealt with it.
Years on and DD is taking Spanish at A Level - so it all turned out well for us. Persevere OP!

In my DCs school they teach French, German and Spanish, but you don't get the choice of doing more than one language and it's pretty random as to what you get to do. One year they'll have one half of the year taking French and the other Spanish; the next year it'll be French and German.

I have one taking French and one German. Friends of theirs have German/French speaking parents but they aren't taking those subjects at school - seems daft. Lack of teachers i guess.

When I was at my bog standard comprehensive school you could choose to take French, German and Latin at O level if you had the ability.

You can see why schools might get fed up though. And there isn’t enough money in the budget or enough MFL teachers to employ excesss teachers to ensure every child gets their preference.

We had French, German and Latin as compulsory at KS3 and French as compulsory at GCSE with the option to also take German and/or Latin.

There might have been some optional after school Italian as well, but not for GCSE.

RafaIsTheKingOfClay
There are a number of parents who seem to be under the impression that being pushy and generally making a noise will make schools give in (as pontiouspilates demonstrates). In my experience that is the sign of a poor school culture or a declining school culture as what happens is the loud mouths routinely expect preferential treatment for their DC (and certain types of school spend a lot of time appeasing loud mouths).

I always think it is a shame when the 'they who shout loudest' approach dominates. Why should perfectly reasonable familes not get their prefernce but accept the procedure whilst pushy loudmouths bully their way through.

Does not doing the subject at pre-gcse prevent them from doing it as a GCSE? If not, and it's for a year only at KS3, then I suppose get on with it and view it as an opportunity to learn something new. As others have said, even at A Level and degree you can start ab initio. I did this - a level French, Spanish at degree and know of A level providers that do the same. Not all schools offer all languages so they don't tend to discriminate based on previous study. If anything, plan ahead for GCSE and find out from the school how the options for Yr10 work. I'd be very surprised if the school were deliberately trying to sabotage your child's future career plans - certainly nowhere I've ever worked would do this. Just contact them again asking for a clearer explanation and express your disappointment. Sometimes,with timetabling, moving from one class to another has a huge knock on effect on other lessons and settings. Hope you get a clearer answer soon,

This is not GCSE options, if it was, and for some reason the combination the OPs daughter chose including spanish was not viable, she wouldn't just be told she had to do german instead.

Ah Maisy I understand that timetabling at your school is very different than at my children's schools. Here each subject has the same amount of time and all blocks are the same length. If you want to do a subject that is only taught in one block then in order to make that work you might have to play around with other subjects but provided the classes aren't full that's not an issue.

For example both my children take Japanese and there is only one senior class. So they couldn't take any subject that was only taught in that block (and had to put up with being in the same class). ds had been timetabled another subject at that time but the counselor looked at the schedule to see if the class was taught in another block and found he could swap but he then needed to find an alternative block for that class. Something similar enough was found to make ds happy so he made the changes. He ended up not being able to fit in everything he wanted so he did an online course for a semester which wasn't a problem. It took about 5 minutes all in. dd had more complicated moves and wanted me to be there for the conversation with the counselor, I think we were there for 10 mins or so. Timetabling is still an issue, and children don't always get what they want but changes are expected and they are managed in partnership with the child. School of about 1000 and the same approach is used across the district (10 odd schools).

NB I got the impression that you thought the OP was harassing the school which is why I pointed out she said she had only had the one meeting and that she had accepted that the family would have to organise for Italian classes outside of school. I get that some parents can be very difficult but I'm not sure it's fair to assume that the OP is planning anything other than trying to get a good outcome for her child.

nooka
Yes. Your set up sounds very differwnt to mine. Are you in a UK state school?

In all schools I have worked at English and Maths get most hours, then science, then humanities and MFL and then other subjects for one hour a week (hence the faff).

I do think the OP does have the attitude of pushy harrassing parent. I don't doubt she only wants what she thinks is best fornher child, but she was unreasonable (in my opinion) to think getting in early and meeting witj the HOD should have afforded her child special treatement. Her posts come across like she feels that because she had meetings and does italian out of school then school procedure shouldn't apply to her child.

The school have said they aren't changing because it will set a precedent. I agree. Give it a term and you'l have 24 parents all wanting meetings and special treatment.

It's an annoying situation but it's fine and kids who are good at languages can pick them up later (& many do at a level or uni)

No I'm not in the UK anymore (think I said so in this thread but might not have). Have family (children and teachers) in UK state and private schools. I don't see why children's interests and aptitudes shouldn't be taken into account especially when it comes to optional subjects. We recently moved and dd had to change schools and our major condition was that dd should be able to continue to study Japanese. My sisters children had to change languages at school and the result was that they forgot everything they'd learned about the previous language and are not very proficient in the new one. That's not the situation for the OP's child as they haven't started either language, it just seems like a rigid school rather than centred approach which is a shame. I know it's harder work but I do believe that client centred approaches are generally much better (my career has been mostly in public sector health and higher education at times when much work has gone into trying to change the culture).

Anyway I know that schools are hard places to work in the UK now, and my issues are with systems not teachers at all. It just seems that adversarial relationship between school and parents are entrenched by approaches like this.

That sounds like quite a good set up. I'm interetsed in the US system of taking credits in subjects over time.

I think things can get adversarial (just from my perspective) when you get parents who think that their child deserves special treatment for reasons which are daft. All it does is gets schools back up because as soon as you give in to one, another comes up wantinf the same because 'it's not fair' and you end up with teachers doing parental whack a mole instead of teaching.

It doesn't fit. The entire system has just gone through a massive shift here in the UK. Schools are reaponding to it as best they can. It's not something that will prevent the OP's child doing another language later so hardly worth the agro and passive agressive references to how the school isn't doing individualised learning.

They might not have been rigid though. There will be two possible options and a number of teachers to teach those options and a maximum number of places. There’s probably a bit of leeway if the number of pupils wanting to do one language is a few extra but if there’s a biggish mismatch then a number of children are going to have to be disappointed. In an ideal world it wouldn’t happen, but the school aren’t going to employ another Spanish teacher. They probably don’t have enough money.

I suspect that the parents who would kick up a fuss over not being able to do the language of choice, would also kick up a fuss if they were being taught in a class size of near 40 or by a teacher who had a limited grasp of Spanish.

I was meaning more the way the timetable worked Rafals. I expect more children will have wanted to do Spanish than German, especially if they are already doing French. German has a reputation for being hard and Spanish is spoken by so many more people so it might be more appealing. Or it may be that the Spanish teacher has a better reputation. Obviously if the classes are full they are full.

We left the UK largely because my dh (ex teacher) thought that the educational system where we moved would be better for our children. Plus our local schools were not great and for some weird reason were all single sex which we wanted to avoid. We moved to BC in Canada. Here there has been a big change because we had a government who had a very adversarial relationship with the teachers union (just one and all teachers have to belong) so lots of industrial action but the government recently lost a long running court case to give much better terms and conditions (and has changed). Right now I think it's a great place for teachers with lots of new job opportunities and fairly decent terms and conditions for example as well as the holidays you get I think 5 days annual leave so generally they are happier and happier teachers pretty much equals happier children I think.

I get what you’re saying but, in the U.K. at least, those things are all linked.

If BC is like where I was in the US then there’s a bit more give in the system because of the way school admissions works.

Actually I wonder whether timetable clash might mean different things in different systems too.

personally i think it's a bit lazy to do Spanish if she is already well ahead in Italian. DD's school let them pick up Spanish in yr9 if they want, presumably it is one of the easier language choices.

No wonder there are problems with kids taking up languages if the languages are being chosen for them. Interest in a language or culture is essential - especially for teenagers

Yes, schools should pander to the exact needs of every child. You know there is a shortage of language teachers? You know that not every language teacher is able to offer the same set of languages to the same exact level? You know that the shortage plus differences in the abilities and experience of existing teachers means timetabling is near on impossible? That one teacher getting pregnant or seriously ill can throw a whole cohort’s results? That schools are still offering more than one language is nothing short of a bloody miracle. And that’s before you start factoring in the financial side of things.

OP - it will be timetabling. Your daughter will be able to pick up other languages down the line. All is not lost.

No wonder there is a shortage of language teachers! Children cannot do the languages they want so lose interest. All gifted linguists should do two languages and should not have to do ab ibnitio anything if they don’t want to. It’s a bit like saying you should do only Biology and Chemistry but no
Physics at GCSE if you are an excellent scientist. No-one would ever dream of that but limiting a MFL to one is fine! It isn’t.

Choosing the MFL for them is not helpful either and not promoting languages to the talented pupils.

I know the OPs DD is interested in fashion so I don’t get the need for languages. I can’t see how GCSEs in languages will get you anywhere at all in fashion unless you have the connections of course. So in some respects it’s a storm in a teacup.

However, I think children do connect with certain languages and not all universities offer ab ibnitio in all languages. Spanish may well be one that is not offered. However a degree in languages is a long way from working in fashion and MFL degrees are not just about speaking and writing in the target language; they are much broader and academic than that. The OPs DD could well find an alternative degree to be much more worthwhile.

I do have one DD with a degree from LCF and another with an MFL degree!