The Curriculum Review
The Department for Education has announced the review of the primary and secondary National Curriculum in England – and wants to hear YOUR opinions about what is taught in schools. This is a real opportunity to get languages into a stronger position in primary and secondary schools.
The Review will be in two phases. The first phase gives us a chance to say whether languages should be in the core National Curriculum and if so what would need to be put in place to support this. Phase 2 (early 2012) will allow us to contribute to the discussion on the content of the core subjects. At a number of meetings ALL has attended, the Government has however already indicated that it is happy to listen now, even before Phase 2 begins, to suggestions about content.
ALL will have regular monthly meetings with the DfE during the Review period and this is an opportunity for us to demonstrate solid support from the community for languages as an important subject across Key Stages.
We are therefore encouraging all of our members to contribute to the simple online consultation on the Curriculum Review. It’s crucial that as many of you as possible respond to the online questionnaire.
However, as well as responses from teachers, we also need the wider community to take part – parents, school governors, those in other professions and in business.
So please let everyone know about the DfE consultation!
The ALL Consultation
We also plan to hold our own consultation. We need views from members to inform ALL’s own response to the Review.
We want to hear from you, so that we can talk to the DfE on your behalf, expressing your concerns and putting forward your ideas and suggestions.
To help focus our minds on the Review and the kind of things we have an opportunity to comment upon, we’ve come up with the following prompts for reflection and discussion. You may wish to respond as an individual or take the opportunity to discuss among colleagues.
1. How do we ensure that all pupils learn languages enjoyably and successfully across all Key Stages and especially at Key Stages 3 and 4?
2. What support would need to be provided in schools generally to allow language teaching to be taught well and successfully to more pupils?
3. What support would need to be provided in addition to school-based developments and opportunities?
4. What changes need to be made to the ways languages are assessed?
5. What would need to be changed in your school to ensure good and successful language teaching at KS 1-4?
6. Should languages be compulsory but not necessarily tested in the more “academic” public examinations (i.e. GCSE)?
7. How should CPD be organised to provide the best possible in-service opportunities for language teachers?
8. Are there ways that initial teacher training should be changed to ensure better language teaching?
9. How can we find the number of language teachers that would be needed were languages to be compulsory across Key Stages 1-4?
10. What is the one thing that would make the biggest change to language teaching in schools in England?
We’d like to ask you to do all you can to get the debate going, and enlist the help of other ALL members! We know that there will be a variety of views among our members but we are sure that everyone believes in the importance of language learning, its status as a subject and the need for languages to be taught well. This is our chance to speak out.
What you can do:
1. Talk to us! You can do this in many different ways:
• By Email: to [email protected],
• On Facebook: www.facebook.com/alllanguages.org.uk,
• On Twitter: http://twitter.com/wendynewman1,
• By Post: to: Association for Language Learning, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH.
• As a group: why not organise a meeting – at an ALL event, in your department, in the staff room, at home or in the pub – and let us have your group’s feedback?
One association – five thousand voices! Let’s get talking…!