The National Centre for Excellence for Language Pedagogy (NCELP) has been funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and the University of York to help put into practice the recommendations of the Teaching Schools Council’s MFL Pedagogy Review in French, German, and Spanish teaching across 45 secondary schools in England. The Centre’s overarching ambition is to improve language curriculum design and pedagogy, leading to high uptake and greater success at GCSE. The NCELP approach to pedagogy is research-led and practice-informed and helps pupils establish, early in their course, a robust knowledge of basic vocabulary, grammar, and the sound and spelling systems (phonics). The pedagogy then reinforces this knowledge via planned practice in meaningful activities.
Since the launch of NCELP in December 2018, phonics, vocabulary and grammar have been the focus of intensive resource and development work. Further CPD with specialist teachers on the project was then followed by Teacher Research Groups within the nine language hubs around the country. Current activities are focussed on meaningful practice and in July each of the nine hubs will host a free Language Hub CPD Day bringing together language teachers from the local area to share research-informed teaching approaches and resources on all four central pillars of language pedagogy.
The NCELP Resource Portal was launched at the end of May and provides an open, searchable database of all the Centre’s research-informed and classroom-ready resources for teaching phonics, vocabulary, grammar and their combination in meaningful practice in French, Spanish and German. To receive a weekly bulletin of the latest materials added to the NCELP Resource Portal and further information about the Centre’s activities, sign up to the Mailing List.