Are kids still learning French?

[Ajoh]

Been looking at some schools and it seems like not all children learned French at primary school, some seem to have done Spanish.... I thought french was standard for the kids in England at least

Spanish instead of French is pretty common now. Most still seem to choose one or the other.

'Teaching may be of any modern or ancient foreign language'. Provision is incredibly variable, some schools bring in outside help and run courses throughout the school. Others rely on someone in the staff having enough knowledge to teach rudimentary skills (or making someone who really doesn't). Spanish is very popular in secondary schools now so unsurprising this is showing at Primary too.

My son has learnt French from year 1 and they start also learning Spanish in year 5.

None of mine did French at primary. Eldest did German and then Spanish at high school. Middle did Spanish at primary and wanted to continue but had to do French at high school as his cohort does French, the other cohort do Spanish.

Its often incredibly basic French when it is done in primary. My name is x and some token vocab they forget by secondary

As pp said, schools can choose any language really, although they may have to justify their choice to Ofsted. I teach German in a primary school. I know of schools that teach French, Spanish or Italian as well. The choice depends on lots of factors: secondary school input, teacher experience, resources available, links with other schools or the whim of the head.

It shouldn't be- the national curriculum is very clear about this. 4 years of progress in one language. But of course there is no extra money for any training or resources.

I think it depends on what MFL teachers a school has managed to find.

Ours is some slides on a topic done with their class teacher once a week. But they then forget it. My daughters are quite bright (one went to grammar) and neither learnt much.

My yr 4 has technically done homeshcool friench topics - asking how much something is, and asking directions. But she watches a 10min video, fills the worksheet and matches the words and its gone by the fillowing week...

My DC allegedly learn French at primary school. I don't think any of them know how to say anything more than 'Bonjour'. The provision has been really awful imo.

Barely any French at primary but really high quality at secondary so doing surprisingly well.

My daughters school they have to choose 2 fro French, Spanish and Latin to study for 3 years until they take their options and they can continue with both is they choose. My daughter took French and Spanish and is about to choose Spanish in her options.

The comp ds left last year teaches half the Y7s French and half the Y7s German. The top sets in French and German start learning Spanish as well in Y8 with a twilight Latin class for those interested in doing that. DS did German GCSE, a year of Spanish, Latin GCSE and German A level. He should have carried on and done Spanish GCSE but unfortunately the teacher came between him and the subject which was a shame as he is going to uni in September to do a ML degree and it would have been nice to have some knowledge of Spanish as well.

They introduce a smidge of French at DCs primary. Really wish languages were more prominent on the primary curriculum - they are sponges when little and it would really help if they learnt the basics before secondary school awkwardness sets in.

As others have said, at primary it's all very ad hoc and down to who in the staffroom speaks what, as far as I could ever tell. DS's old primary certainly wasn't going to employ a teacher for languages, but if a teacher spoke a language, they were up!

DS's primary only taught Spanish, from ur 1 and with a specialist Spanish teacher. His secondary school (state comp) offers a choice between Spanish, French and Mandarin.

yr 1

French from about Year 4 in Primary, both French and Spanish last year (Year 7, State), had to select one of the two this year (chose French) & has the option of doing both next year.

Tbh the language "teaching" offered by our primary school was so excruciatingly awful they may as well have not bothered.

At my DD’s state secondary, most y7s start French with some children (based on sats and school’s cats) offered Mandarin (2 classes of 30 each). Then in y8 they all take an additional MFL of either German or Spanish so they do two languages for y8 and y9. My DD has done Mandarin and Spanish and will definitely choose Spanish for gcse. Undecided about mandarin.

The languages teaching at our kids primary was incredibly basic - sticking things like a list of colours in front of kids and saying I don't speak French so can't help you with those. But in theory it was French taught. Another teacher used to say oh run out of time again so no French today every lesson.

So started properly year 7 at secondary when choice of French or Spanish but that varies by school.

All through academy Spanish from year 3 to 6. Year 7 they do French Spanish and German a term each to decide what they would like to do in year 8 and 9 ( currently going through GCSE options)

My eldest daughter did Spanish in primary- though it’s such a basic level she can’t speak a word now! She did french GCSE 2 years ago and got a 9, so not learning at primary didn’t seem to impact her. Don’t think it really matters what language they do in primary, they all forget it anyway and the teaching generally isn’t great

Our state primary teaches French from year 1, they have a full time native French teacher working on site.
When they had the resource they were teaching Spanish to year 6 in addition. But that teacher has now left so no more Spanish. This is SW London.

Most schools seem to teach French and Spanish these days. Some offer German which was more common in the past. Other schools near us (grammars and indies mostly) offer Japanese, Russian and Italian.