The school is a state funded mixed primary school situated in an urban area. It has approximately 400 pupils. It has a mixed race population with pupils of various European and Asian origins.
The main language of tuition in the school is English, while the main languages spoken by the pupils are Slovenian and Chinese.
The other languages taught in the school are French and Spanish, which are taught at beginner level from year 1 and continue to year 6. Over 60% of the pupils are involved in learning at least one language in a unique programme described below.
There are no language assistants in the school, however, the teacher has been funded by the British council for her own professional development to spend 2 weeks in Spain looking at their methodology & improving cultural & linguistic ability. This has enabled her to perfect her own language skills and consequently approach her foreign language teaching with more confidence,
The language approach in this school is different to some of the other schools we have looked at. Rather than the more formal approach the school management has chosen to introduce French and Spanish in a more informal and fun way during an afternoon activity club, which takes place after school hours. Once the children are familiar with some of the basics, they continue with Spanish which is taught within the curriculum, starting with short activity lessons in year 1 and then increasing to regular timetabled lessons of approximately 45 minutes per week for all classes from year 2 to year 6. The focus is on gaining a basic vocabulary in everyday words such as the family, food, weather, town, travel etc. The children also learn simple songs and rhymes
The school has had funding from the British Council for two years now for a project with a partner school in Spain, which enables them to take a group of pupils to visit their partner school. They are now applying for Comenius funding with this partner school to try and fund a reciprocal visit for their pupils.
With the UK curriculum for Primary Schools, The Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages states in its section on Intercultural Understanding: ’Language competence and intercultural understanding are an essential part of being a citizen. This provides school management with a firm basis upon which to base its language policy in the pedagogic practice of the school. The aim of this intercultural approach is that the children can develop a greater understanding of their own lives in the context of exploring the lives of others. They learn to look at things from another's perspective, giving them insight into the people, culture and traditions of other cultures.
In this case, the school management policy of the school towards language learning has deliberately chosen to introduce foreign language learning through a ‘soft’ approach. The main success factor of the after school club is that it introduces the idea of learning a foreign language to young children and they approach it as fun. When they, at a later stage, join the more formal curriculum bases classes, they already have a background from which to work.
The indicators are that this policy is very successful. The school were among the top winners of the Spanish primary school of the year award 2008 for the after school Spanish club. Another indicator is the increased motivation of the pupils and the teachers report a huge enthusiasm among the young pupils for learning a foreign language.