LANGUAGES


When languages become non- compulsory at GCSE, Ashlawn


School, like many others, saw a drop in up-take. Concerned that students were not recognising the importance of learning a language, strategies were put in place to tackle this. Deputy headteacher Emily Gent explains


are students who have passed the 11-plus and for us this is approximately 12 per cent of each year group. Every year this section of the cohort is boosted three-fold with students who would benefit from a gifted and talented curriculum, making the “grammar stream” just over a third of the school. The grammar students have a slightly varied


R


curriculum diet which broadly speaking means they study two modern languages. Even though Ashlawn has invested heavily in modern foreign languages since 2004, when modern foreign languages (MFL) became a non-compulsory national curriculum subject, the number of students choosing to study at Ashlawn for a MFL has been declining. While the school was able to stem some of the


Union address: ASCL A free school meals dilemma


Brian Lightman asks if we rely too much on


free school meals as an indicator of pupils who are disadvantaged


THERE IS no such thing as a free (school) lunch. Recently the Department for Education (DfE)


published a model letter for schools to send to parents in order to encourage registrations for free school meals and therefore increase their pupil premium allocation. It pointed out that this would attract £488 to the


school in order to support their son or daughter in their education and emphasised that their child did not have to take the “free and healthy” meal to which they would be entitled. School leaders have known for some time that it


is important to maximise the uptake of free school meals. In fact their jobs may depend on it because “eligibility” for free school meals plays a major part in our school funding mechanism and thus the accountability framework. I have personal experience of the effect of free


school meal take up, having been head of a school on the borderline of two free school meal benchmarking categories. I remember one wonderful occasion when,


having emerged from a series of meetings with the senior team to discuss what we considered to be a disappointing set of GCSE results, I opened a letter from the director of education congratulating us on the school’s improvement. Three more applications for free school meals had transformed our position in the benchmarking tables, leading to a completely misguided judgement of our students’ attainment. Recently, schools in Wales were “graded” by the government using a measure which was strongly


influenced by the free school meal indicator. Predictably, a league table of schools based on this one indicator appeared on the BBC website straight away. The entire reputation of the school in the eyes of parents and the community could have been positively influenced by judicious use of the DfE model letter. Two other aspects of using free school meals to


determine funding levels make me a little nervous. First, it is only a proxy indicator and we all know that not all disadvantaged children are eligible for free school meals. If we raise parental expectations that all of the pupil premium funding will go directly to their child how will we provide for other educationally disadvantaged young people? Will schools be accused of diverting the funding if they try to allocate it in ways which have the biggest impact on need? Second, in the light of the current vogue for


blaming schools when they respond to the perverse incentives posed by accountability measures, will they be pilloried if they enthusiastically follow the DfE’s lead and conduct a successful marketing campaign to increase the uptake of free school meals? Will they be accused of playing the league tables in order to massage their results? Or should it be that we need to take this advice


at face value and recognise that additional support for our most needy pupils should be at the top of everyone’s list of priorities? If this is the case, and I believe it is, surely we should find a more reliable method of identifying who most requires such important services, rather than relying on parents filling in a form. For much of 2011 teachers and staff in schools


have had to live with a barrage of criticism which fails to recognise the enormous efforts they are making with considerable success to raise standards, improve behaviour and lift the quality of education in general. Let us hope that in 2012 we can celebrate our achievements, continue to raise expectations and begin to see the rhetoric of a “high status profession” approaching some kind of reality.


• Brian Lightman is the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. Visit www.ascl.org.uk


UGBY IN Warwickshire is a town that still honours the 11-plus exam and Ashlawn School in Rugby is one of a very small number of bilateral schools in the country. Bilateral schools are ones where a proportion of each year’s cohort


Driving MFL up-take


decline in the years after MFL first became non- compulsory, it was clear that languages were becoming increasingly unpopular. Although students at Ashlawn had had individual interviews for their option choices, unless the school made languages compulsory, it was difficult to change students’ minds once they had seen the wide variety of options available to them. In addition, when parents were contacted they often


supported their child’s option choices and so retaining a healthy languages department including progression onto A level was looking increasingly problematic.


So the question might be why do languages matter?


Colin May, our head of MFL, argues that in today’s ever-changing, technology-based global economy, employers and governments around the world are looking for highly skilled, highly motivated individuals who can communicate in a variety of languages. These language-based skills are highly sought-


after and the people who possess them are often very well rewarded. They can help to generate business and therefore create employment in a wide range of sectors including manufacturing, engineering, tourism, haulage, imports and exports, finance and the law. They are also useful in entering the world of


education, interpreting and translation in a variety of settings. More than ever before, languages are becoming more important not just for the European economy, but also for worldwide trade as countries seek to explore global markets. Mr May went on to state that he is more convinced


than ever that being able to communicate with people in their own language for personal, professional or social reasons can open up a whole new world of exciting opportunities. Ashlawn wanted to continue to offer a vibrant and


varied key stage 4 and 5 curriculum which included languages and realised that a vision of hope was no match for a strategy to create a change in the culture. First, the school needed to know what the problem was. The teaching and learning was, at the time, graded as good across the MFL department with pockets of clearly outstanding practice and students appeared to enjoy the varied teaching strategies. The school decided to go to the students and their


parents for advice, and following a consultation process with parents and students we constructed the following process. Essentially the meetings had uncovered that parents


were unaware of the ramifications of “dropping” a subject, not just languages. Parents stated that they needed advice on how to have meaningful conversations with their children about the options process and specifically their preferences. To enable this to happen, the strategy included a


way for parents to be able to articulate to their children why they should take particular subjects. To assist parents in doing this and to help them through the wider options process, each parent was sent an individually tailored letter explaining which subjects their child was being recommended for, and the progression routes available through taking those subjects. The main subjects targeted were history, geography,


French, German, and triple and double science. New option subjects such as psychology and health and social care were not included as the heads of department did not have knowledge of the key stage 3 students and also because we did not want to seem to be removing every element of choice from the process. These letters went out before the options evening


and it was noticeable that the parents were able to articulate back to the teachers and school leaders why their child wanted to pursue particular options. Following the options evening, all survey forms were collected and any students who had not opted for a language, humanities subject or triple science but who had been recommended for these subjects were interviewed. This was not an interview intended to force these students to take particular subjects, but rather


12 SecEd • January 5 2012


a conversation to clarify that the choices they were making had been thought through. In addition to the letter to parents, the MFL


department made a concerted effort to promote languages for everyone – not just the most able. It also took the decision to contact parents at the early stage of options process if a student did not seem to be sure about his or her particular decisions. The changes in information, advice and guidance


given to the students also raised another dilemma for the school. For years the lesson length at the school had been 75 minutes (giving us 20 periods a week). Winners in this timetable were the core subjects with 3.75 hours every week while options subjects had just 2.5 hours. To ensure that the students we were promoting MFL


to were successful, Ashlawn had to alter the times given to all subjects. This was not possible with the length of lesson so a change in the timetable of the school was devised to make it more equitable across all subjects. Following these changes it was not just the English


Baccalaureate (EBacc) subjects which benefited. Ashlawn has decided to keep the EBacc subjects within all of the option blocks and so all option subjects benefited from the new timetable. This gave the students wider option choices,


prevented “sink groups” and, due to increase in demand, provided subjects with the chance to implement ability setting between two groups in any one option block. These changes in information, advice and guidance


for both students and parents have resulted in 80 per cent of the current year 9 cohort studying for a GCSE in a MFL (see graph, below). In year 9 we now have 80 per cent of students eligible to attain the EBacc. While we as professionals may have our concerns


about the EBacc, it seems prudent that we ensure that students have access to attain what may become the progression measure of choice.


SecEd


• Emily Gent is the deputy headteacher (6th form and whole-school curriculum) at Ashlawn School in Rugby.


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