COMMUNITY LANGUAGES
Shazia Siddique, head
other subjects. By sharing this feeling of achievement
with all students at the school, we have been able to
of community languages at
inspire others to do the same.
We have accomplished this through a community
languages newsletter aimed at students and featuring
Lister Community School,
pupils who have excelled in Urdu. We also have
assemblies where successful students talk about their
explains how community
experiences. This helps to illustrate that a language
GCSE has a real value and can provide essential skills.
languages can revitalise
As a result, we receive more enquiries about Urdu and
other community languages and uptake has steadily
increased.
language departments and
Through community languages we have also been
able to create a cultural vibrancy that helps immerse
help boost uptake of GCSEs
learners in the language, allowing us to tap into the
passions of our students, which in turn motivates
such as Urdu and Punjabi
those in the classroom. For example, we build
cultural celebrations into lessons and get students
speaking, writing and listening about events such as
RDU, CANTONESE, Punjabi and Ramadan.
U
Bengali are the four most widely We also work hard to make language lessons
used community languages in innovative and exciting, with creative writing forming
England, and in an era of increased a key part of each lesson. This allows students to build
globalisation having a complete sentences, narratives and grammatical skills on a topic
cohort with the same second
language is no longer enough.
More than ever we need to ensure that the UK has a
diversity of young language speakers able to deal with
the economic and cultural situations that occur across
Boosting
that is of interest to them. For example, this might mean
they write about a day in the life of their favourite actor
or how they imagine London will be in 100 years’ time.
It draws on their creativity and gets them excited.
We make sure learners produce very personal work
the world. that they can take pride in. We are also seeing other
The challenge we face as teachers, heads, governors schools developing cross-curricular language teaching,
and parents is raising the status of community languages
and engaging young people in these languages from a
young age.
At Lister Community School in London, we have
made the most of the rich cultural diversity within the
languages
for example using music in lessons. We know that pupils
enjoy developing and performing songs in languages
– there are plenty of budding pop stars in our schools. It
gives them the chance to put their skills to good use in
a way that they find exciting and rewarding.
school and have successfully integrated community Overall, our focus on community languages is
languages into our mainstream curriculum and engaged driving interest and engagement in languages as a
all pupils without making languages compulsory. whole within the school. The tireless efforts of the entire
Across the school, 95 per cent of pupils have some still work to be done, the number of non-mainstream pupils in years 8 and 9. Furthermore, in recent years, languages department and the success of Urdu has built
ability in a community language. Although this is languages taught in England’s schools has increased attainment has been consistently high with all GCSE a can-do attitude among students, which is having a
high, this is not out of the ordinary. The UK has more by more than two per cent in the last year, according to students passing their exams and 83 per cent gaining positive impact on the uptake of other languages.
community language speakers than any European recent research. an A* to C grade compared to the national average of It might not be the answer for all schools, but
country, and in London’s schools alone more than 300 The majority of our students come from Pakistani 71 per cent. offering community languages – whether that is Polish,
languages are spoken, including Bengali, Cantonese, backgrounds, making Urdu the most popular language Achieving these results in the face of declining Mandarin, Urdu or Cantonese – can tap into seams
Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu. taught at GCSE level, followed by Spanish and French. language uptake nationally has been a challenge, of talent, release potential in students, raise their
By harnessing the talent within our school and When I joined the school in 1999, Urdu classes were but it is highly obtainable and other schools could attainment, increase their confidence, and act as a
offering accreditation in community languages, we taken by a part-time instructor and were not considered follow in our footsteps. Key to our approach has catalyst to encourage others to choose languages at
have built momentum and driven up interest and to be a serious GCSE option by our pupils. However, been to highlight pupil achievement to the whole GCSE. SecEd
attainment. This is providing students with invaluable we have steadily built its status, along with other school at every opportunity. Achieving high grades and
skills and has gone some way to revitalising languages community languages, and as a result we now have recognition for language skills can be a euphoric feeling • Shazia Siddique is head of community languages at
as a whole. And we are not alone – while there is 20 students learning Urdu at GCSE, with around 60 for young people – especially if they do not excel in Lister Community School in east London.
14 SecEd • April 23 2009
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