Standard of MFL teaching in my son's school driving me nuts

[Ferniebrook]

My son is in an inner city comp and is generally having a very good experience. However the MFL teaching is dire. I realised this because I have A level standard Spanish and started digging around into what he is doing because his marks were so much lower than other subjects. I went into the school, wrote to the head etc. I also looked at the school's data and realise MFL progress for high prior attainers was very low compared to other subjects. Hardly anyone getting above a 6, mostly 5s. The head said they have an issue with recruitment and are trying to raise standards, but know there is a problem.

The Spanish teacher was clearly v upset I did this and then insisted that he should do foundation despite him getting very high marks in any assessments. He just did another assessment and got over 90% again and she has now conceded he should do higher. However, I went over his paper and he did a good job, but there are errors in it which she has not bothered to correct, really quite basic errors to be honest. I am so cross about this and that she is letting the children down but I can't complain again because I know she is being vindictive and will probably say OK he has to do foundation (or give him behaviour points which he never got until I complained). Homework is sporadic and there are often mistakes in the homework or the task doesn't make sense.

I am already giving him a lot of support at home and thinking I might go back to the head end of the year with examples of incorrect marking. Any thoughts? So sad that it has come to this for MFL. No wonder vast majority can't wait to stop.

Needed a vent! Thanks for reading

The head said they have an issue with recruitment and are trying to raise standards, but know there is a problem.

Is the teacher a specialist? Are they an MFL teacher at all? What would you like the school to do?

I don't get that impression given the level of Spanish. I would like them to improve the teaching so my son and his peers can reach their potential. Even without recruitment training, courses, upskilling, taking care to mark homework could be achieved. The pupils are being let down, badly. Sadly, if they cant get decent teachers in MFL maybe they have to do what others are doing and stop teaching languages. That too would be awful though. I can help my son, although I barely have time and my Spanish is not as good as needed really, but most parents cannot.

Is he planning to go onto a level Spanish?

If not I would not be worrying about it too much.

It's likely the teacher either has Spanish as her second teaching language or doesn't have Spanish as her official teaching language at all.

You do potentially run the risk of the school deciding it's not worth doing mfl at all if it generates a lot of complaints.

You make a good point. It just makes me sad because I love languages and think they are such a brilliant thing. Teacher has English already as a second language so Spanish is 3rd or beyond, which in itself wouldn't be a problem but level v low. It's also laziness - last week reading comprehension text didn't correspond to questions - usually this kind of thing. Most parents are not bothered about languages (and I don't think the school is tbh) so there won't be loads of complaints. There will be a lot of v low grades though and children turned off languages for life....

One of my jobs is improving teaching. It's not an overnight thing and if you push too hard, you have people off with stress.

Marking homework accurately should be a given, but everything else you mention has a cost. Schools are in crisis. That doesn't make this right but that's where we are.

Teaching MFL in schools - particularly inner city comps - is often acknowledged to be a nightmare. Many kids think it's a waste of time, aren't interested in learning a language and the knock on effect on behaviour and disruption is damaging. MFL progress is often low, because even bright kids don't see the point in struggling through a foreign language and find it hard.

I agree with the PP that the teacher may not speak much more than fairly basic Spanish. We've had language teachers before that spoke fluent French, but were expected to teach French and German, say, and their German was perhaps not that good.

Objectively I get it. It's harder when it's your child and there isn't time. If the basics of regular, clear (half the time homework is muddled/ errors in it) homework, marked in a reasonable time frame were in place that would be something. There are so many good resources out there (both my parents were MFL teachers, in better times, and are really shocked) and I find it hard to accept this is as good at it gets and it should just be accepted. If teacher hasn't got great Spanish double check when marking? Pay a native to double check assessments?? Surely there is something

They are reasonable at getting middle prior attainers to achieve average progress. But that seems to be the ceiling because HPAs get 1.6 of a grade less than national average, which is pretty bad? I don't want to give up on him enjoying Spanish (he actually - shock horror - started to enjoy it once we started going over stuff at home) because a language to me a is a key skill, not an unnecessary add on. The grade my DS gets will be considerably lower than other subjects, just want to try to stop him tanking and think he won't as already improved a lot (from a v low bar admittedly) The situation nationally only seems to be getting worse

I had this when I was doing A level French. My parents got me a tutor. Made a massive difference. Otherwise Duolingo ~ free to use. There are lots of free resources out there. Why don’t you do it with him?

I mean in terms of improving his Spanish - I'm learning it at the moment and watching original Spanish tv on Netflix and doing online learning will help him.

In terms of the teaching:

I left teaching just over a year ago. It's getting harder and harder to recruit teachers because the workload is high and behaviour is bad. This is feeding through into a lack of options at a level and bigger classes in the compulsory subjects like maths and English.

Subject specialists will be focused at GCSEs - so you'll have the people with maths degrees teaching year 10 and 11 and PE staff and other non subject specialists teaching year 7. If it gets really bad (and in most schools it is really bad) then class sizes go up and they focus on the students who really need good teaching which is the middle attainers.

If you have a new teacher in a subject, or a teacher who is covering Spanish but is actually trained in French/German then their focus and the schools' focus will be exam classes. Within that they will focus on the students who are "off target". Each student has a target based on their ks2 sats which they need to hit for the school to be rated well.

Thanks, yeah we are trying to do 45 mins a week - has been hard as he has one GCSE this year and a lot of other homework but we're getting back on it. Have found some brilliant resources online and got the CPG revision book/ cards and a fantastic grammar resource from TES. I am working full time and single parent who is also studying, so this is an additional activity I could do without, but hey ho, when he said he was enjoying Spanish that made me happy and there aren't other options! I have to check a lot of things as am rusty, but we work it out together. Let's see how it goes...

Thanks - he is year 10 btw

pd I think the fact I have had to spend my spare time swotting up to try to rescue the situation is fuelling my frustration when homework is unmarked/ basic errors not corrected...

Hi @Ferniebrook what year is he? I assume yr 10 as we are way too late for H/ F discussion - unless that was earlier this year?

If yr 10 then it's a bit early IMHO for that discussion. Unless a student is obviously weaker which your ds does not seem to be.

I taught MFL in school and still tutor (French and German) and the quality and quantity of HW returned even from a GCSE class was pitiful tbh. Still it should of course be correct and, if set and returned, should be accurately marked, I agree.

I would continue to support your son at home but I wouldn't contact the head with examples of poor marking - sounds as tho they know. It's not easy to recruit MFL teachers and Spanish is in high demand (unlike German) yet numbers may well be limited. None of the MFL teachers I know well (obvs quite a few) could teach A level Spanish and most (inc me) would be wary of GCSE. I would teach KS3 at the outside (I have O level Spanish!).

What board is he doing? Where does he struggle most? Happy to help witn exam tips.

Sorry I xposted with this answer!

In the past in my department (maths) when we have been short of teachers the less experienced ones took year 10 and year 12 and the more experienced ones taught year 11 and year 13.

It's possible his teacher will change next year.

Either way going to the head won't change anything. Worst case the teacher hears you've complained and it's the straw that breaks her back and she either quits the school or refuses to teach outside her subject area.

My school had to cancel business gcse in the middle of year 10 for almost exactly this reason.

I really think most parents still don't get how dire the recruitment situation in teaching is. It's very hard to find MFL teachers so the school are probably pleased they've got a live body in front of the class . It's a hard subject to teach. Fewer and fewer students are going on to study MFL at university so then there will be even fewer candidates for teaching. Eventually MFL probably won't be offered at all.

If you have A-Level Spanish I would suggest supporting him at home or getting tuition, possibly online? The school won't be able to conjure up a teacher out of thin air.

Thanks so much. He is doing AQA. I have concentrated on trying to get him secure on different tenses and basic grammatical structures, alongside some vocab. That seems to have got him from a grade 3 end of year 9 to getting 90% on foundation assessments which as you would know is well above the 5 boundary. Now he'll be doing higher assessments so hopefully will get a 6 and then up to a 7 for end of next year. I'm not looking beyond that as not confident my own Spanish can take him to the highest grades tbh.

It sounds like going to the school directly isn't getting you very far and is causing you stress. If you and your son are keen for him to do well in his Spanish GCSE I'd take matters into your own hands as you've already mentioned you have.

I run a language school and teach GCSE and A Level Spanish. Many of my students don't attend a school which offers a language, or they want to study a language which isn't offered, so they are learning by themselves for a year or two. They all complete the GCSE course through mainly independent study with one hour input from me per week and come out with grades 8 or 9s after a year of studying. So it can be achieved!

The resources I'd recommend for your son are:

• Viva grammar book (costs around £5 online) it covers all the AQA GCSE grammar he'd need to know for the exams
• AQA Higher GCSE textbook (can get these second hand online).
• Quizlet - set up an account on here and get him to revise the vocab lists from the above textbook every week. There are tests on Quizlet that he can do to check he's remembered the vocab.
• Nearer the exams he can do all the past papers that are available online on the AQA website.

If he gets hold of the above textbooks and is keen to learn I am happy to mark anything for him free of charge. It would be nice to help a keen linguist. Feel free to PM me!

Get him a tutor once a week.

Yes good recs from @JiminyCrickets14 agree re H textbook.

Yes vocab and verbs are the key things to focus on. One tricky thing is access to audio for listenings as you won't have that with the textbook. I recommend using any past papers task (I mean any year and any board) as you will soon run out of current AQA ones. Just remember that the question structure will differ. But even a legacy paper will provide someone speaking Spanish! Focus on F papers for that just now as a H GCSE paper may be a challenge.

Oh thank you very helpful and kind. I may well take you up on this because although I have A level I'm not always 100% on the grammar for the written. How would I contact you?

A tutor would be expensive and given I have A level Spanish we're making the best of what is at hand :-)

Yes and there are lots of exam strategies to go over which can help to boost a person's grade.
I think you can send private messages on here

MFL teacher here. My main subject is French. I have gcse Spanish that I did 15 years ago after school with the kids. I would not be able to.teach gcse confidently. I keep.my fingers crossed every year, that I.am not asked to do it. Situation re recruitment is dire

Thanks yes. Just the simple advice around using different tenses and a range of vocab has helped him so far. And am trying to get a few complex structures in his mind - me gusta que sea/ si pudiera, me gustaria (I'm not going on in case the teachers on here have to correct me :-))