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

@ostrichlover well done to your daughter - do you think she had a natural aptitude for French or did she do anything particularly helpful to reinforce her learning? DC has just started Y7 and especially as not in school at the moment to practice speaking I'm keen to encourage languages as much as possible.

@GrumblyMumblyisnotJumbly
We have no French in our family but she did enter secondary school with some basic french skills. Learning french has always interested her and she would often speak it at home as practice although my French abilities are far from what is needed to sustain a conversation. I seem to remember her grades really picked up around year 10 as learning the foundations of the language is probably the hardest part. If you encourage practice as much as possible whilst your child is still young, I’m sure by the time they enter GCSE age they will be doing exceptionally well. I agree that learning a language is so important and wish I had the same encouragement when I was young!

@ostrichlover thanks, me too, I would love to be able to properly converse in another language. Will definitely be brushing up my skills alongside DC.

The quality at my children's primary is very rudimentary. I watched my son's video lesson and the teacher was pronouncing the words completely incorrectly (not "with a bit of an accent", totally wrong). Mine have lessons outside of school instead- our local La Jolie Ronde teacher is brilliant.

My son is learning Gaeilge/Irish in Primary as that’s a set requirement here in Ireland, even though he’s English, and I’m really impressed with how much he’s learnt as it’s not an easy language to master.

I think it will help him learn more traditional modern languages when he goes to secondary school.

At my dd's school, half the year do French and half Spanish, allocated randomly. Dd got French, and was disappointed as she wanted Spanish - she's enjoying French now though.

They can pick up the other in year 9, instead of some creative options or things like business studies, but it's accelerated, so only top sets are allowed to.

My DN's school alternates year on year- one year all the Y7s do Spanish, next year's cohort do French.
They were also allowed to pick up the other as part of GCSE options, and Dn is hoping to do both for A level.

I would say that very few primaries actually “teach” any MFLs following and substantial curriculum. From my experience they introduce words and phrases in the language and sometimes follow a cross syllabus curriculum. IE the school says this week is “International week” so in French they will learn the names of 8 countries. No real curriculum.