Case Study

Background

Bristol Metropolitan College is located in Bristol and has a 650+ student population with a strong mix of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The school was granted status as a Specialist Language College in January 2005.

The school motto reflects the school’s approach to community language learning:

'The school at the heart of the community, the community at the heart of the school.'

The school is committed to community languages and liaises widely with other primary, secondary and complementary schools. Its status as a Language College has allowed it to increase the range of languages it offers, invest in improving classroom space for language teaching, purchase new resources and technology and appoint new staff.

The school has 6 language classrooms that are fully equipped with Interactive Whiteboards and has purchased 60 laptops for students to use for independent learning in the classroom. It runs GCSE accreditation in 4 languages, accredits home languages for students from other cultural backgrounds (including students from other schools), provides ‘twilight’ language lessons, has introduced the Certificate of Business Language Competence (CBLC) at Key Stage 4, runs language lessons in 5 partner primary schools, provides Briarfield - a shared-site school for children with severe disabilities - with ‘taster’ language classes, and has offered adult language classes to the local community.

It has a thriving and innovative Culture and Language Week each July during which a specially designed 5-day timetable allows all subject areas to explore aspects of language and culture within their curriculum.

Accreditation of community languages

The school was already regularly teaching French, German and Urdu within the main curriculum before becoming a Specialist Language College. Arabic was then added as an additional community language and is now an alternative to German at KS3 and an option at KS4.

The school has been able to employ additional bilingual support staff in Polish and Somali, as well as a family member of one of its students who teaches after-school Panjabi. Arabic and Urdu teachers are fully qualified. One Somali lesson is taught per week in years 8 and 9 in time taken from MFL. Evening lessons take place once a week after school hours in Panjabi and Dutch.

The accreditation of community languages started in 2002. By 2006, the school accredited students in Urdu, Polish, Dutch, Arabic Portuguese, Bengali and Panjabi at GSCE and Arabic and Polish at AS-A level. Last year they added Turkish and Chinese GCSEs as well as Dutch at AS-A level. Asset language accreditation began in 2007 for KS3 and KS4 students in Arabic, Urdu and Somali.

On entry, the school registers each student’s first language which helps in identifying the community languages spoken by children which they may later want to accredit. More recently, an audit undertaken across one whole year group proved valuable in identifying other ‘hidden’ language competencies and would benefit from a larger roll-out across the school.

Students sit GCSE, AS-A levels and Asset Languages examinations. They are often entered as candidates for GCSE or AS-A levels at an earlier stage than for other subjects.

Linda Button, Director of the Language College, held a seminar in November 2007 with colleagues in the Bristol area aimed at raising the profile of community languages, supporting teachers through the accreditation process and increasing the number of community language teachers and examiners.

Impact on students

For students, the accreditation process offers them a subject in which they can perform at a high level, in contrast to other subjects where they may feel limited by their knowledge of English, particularly if newly arrived in the UK. Attaining an examination pass at an early stage is motivating and gives them an early sense of achievement.

The 2007 results demonstrate the value of accreditation to the students and the school:

• 8 students achieved an AS-A level (Arabic, Dutch, Polish) pass early (years 10 and 11)
• 138 (83%) of year 11 students took GCSEs (9 languages) – 75 achieved an A*-C pass.
• 29 students achieved an A*-C pass at GCSE (Polish, Dutch, Chinese, Turkish, Arabic) in years 8-10
• 75 year 9 and 10 students achieved Preliminary level Asset accreditation (Urdu, French)
• 91 year 8 and 9 students and 2 year 11 students achieved Breakthrough level Asset accreditation (Arabic, Somali, Urdu, German)

Successes

• Achievement is high – one student in Urdu achieved one of the 5 highest marks out of 3,312 candidates.
• Arabic is now not only attracting students with some existing knowledge of the language but also learners who have never studied the language before.
• The self esteem and confidence of students is raised as community languages are seen and recognized as equal with traditional Modern Foreign Languages.

Accrediting a first language provides a basis on which to build knowledge of other languages – one student who achieved Arabic A-level with a grade A went on to achieve a grade C pass at GCSE French after just 3 years learning the language.

Challenges

• Identifying ‘other’ languages of students needs to be a more rigorous process. Some students have not only a first language other than English, but yet another national/official/school language which is not currently captured on entry to the school (e.g. a Somali student brought up in Holland).
• Bristol Metropolitan College accepts students from other schools for accreditation but not all schools are prepared to do this. It can be a difficult and time-consuming process and a wider network of schools supporting the initiative would be helpful.
• Although languages can be accredited, it is not possible to provide teaching in each and every language. Time cannot be taken from other subjects and after-school lessons do not work particularly well as students often have other religious/family obligations to attend. The school tries to offer support to students on examination techniques so that they understand the format of the paper and what is expected of them. A good level of English is required to understand questions and instructions, particularly Asset exams, and those with lesser literacy in English can find this very difficult.
• Despite the range of examinations on offer the school has not yet been able to find accreditation for a Finnish speaker.
• The administration was a learning process as the project progressed. Practical advice was valuable where it existed and this prompted the development of the school’s support website.

Future plans

• Possible introduction of a systematic audit of all language ability for each student on entry to the school.
• Accreditation at the moment for Asset is based on 3 skills only (reading, listening and writing). Staff development is required to get teachers in the lesser taught languages accredited to do speaking tests perhaps through twilight training for MFL teachers and speaking test examiners.
• Potential collaboration with Sikh Resource Centre, a complementary school, who want to do Asset Languages.
• Bristol Metropolitan College would like to explore whether complementary schools can play a greater part in supporting the learning of community languages. They would also like to investigate whether the Local Authority would consider centralized cross-phase (primary, secondary, adult) teaching for community languages.

About the School