LANGUAGES
“Some offer Latin, Japanese and Mandarin as GCSEs, others send students on trips abroad or exchange programmes with partner schools”
learning modern foreign languages, but don’t commit to studying them as they don’t believe in the long-term benefits. Further down the road, this leads to fewer undergraduates studying modern language degrees and makes it harder to recruit teachers. Despite this, things are looking up. Schools are more determined than ever to make modern languages more appealing to students. Some offer Latin, Japanese and Mandarin as GCSEs, while others send students on trips abroad as well as arranging longer exchange programmes
with partner schools in France, Germany and Spain – particularly at senior school level, right the way through to sixth form. Unfortunately, there is no overnight fix for this; no tried-and-true, magic method to ensure students list a modern language in their GCSE choices. But the key point is that schools in our area, and their modern language teachers, are just as keen to get kids broadening their linguistic horizons. The goal is to show children that learning a second (or even third) language is about more than verb conjugations and nerve- racking oral exams.
CAMBRIDGE EDUCATION GUIDE 41
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