A report on the future of language-teaching in Britain’s schools is to rule out a return to compulsory lessons for all pupils up to 16. The interim report from Lord Dearing’s inquiry, due on Thursday, is likely to dismay academics who have called on the Government to turn the clock back.
The full story is on the Independent Online.
British graduates are missing out on top business jobs because of their lack of language skills, an academic has warned ahead of a review of the government’s foreign languages policy. Bill Houston, programme director of undergraduate international business at Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University, said a shortage of languages was having a knock-on effect in the business world.
The Education Guardian has the full story.
Joe Dale, a full-time French teacher at Nodehill middle school on the Isle of Wight, has made a big impact by implementing ICT in his own classroom and then sharing the learning with other teachers.
You can read more on the Education Guardian.
Bristol’s first specialist language college has been assessed by Ofsted.
The Whitefield Fishponds Community School in Fishponds was judged to be providing a “satisfactory quality of education” by the schools’ body.
The report also concluded that the school, which has 747 students, has good capacity for improvement.
Around 28% of the college’s pupils passed five or more GCSEs in 2006 with Grades A* to C; which was fewer than in 2005 (31%).
Read more on the BBC website.
Languages such as French, German and Spanish should be taught compulsorily in primary schools and made more interesting at secondary level, Lord Dearing is expected to say in his interim report on language teaching, to be published this week. Dull lessons are causing pupils to switch off and have created a crisis in language teaching, with the UK performing dismally on a world scale, experts have told Dearing during his inquiry into the problem. On Thursday he is likely to say lessons need to be made more engaging to persuade pupils to take part.
Read the full story on the Education Guardian website.
A survey has revealed that teachers as a profession tend to travel, are financially astute (twice as likely to have premium bonds or unit trusts), busy (do a lot of online shopping), intelligent (are far likelier to speak European languages than the rest of the population).
Read the full story on the TES website.
LearnEnglish has just launched a series of new Scottish web pages aimed at helping people develop their English language skills. They cover a diverse range of topics including Scottish life, culture, icons, multiculturalism and language.
Read more on the British Council website.
Less than a decade after it declared independence, Latvia is booming. One of the poorest countries in the EU when it joined, Latvia now has the highest growth rate in Europe – 10.2% in 2005, according to the Finance Ministry. In 2005, Latvia introduced a citizenship test, an exam in Latvian language and history, which you must pass. Many of the 450,000 Russians living here failed or refused to sit the exam. They remain non-citizens in their own country.
The Herald has the full story online.
An increase in non-native speakers teaching English around the world has contributed to a decline in foreign students seeking to learn the language in the UK.
The Education Guardian has the full story.
At 2029 French time on Wednesday evening, France’s latest bid to shore up its influence on the world stage went live on the internet, with the launch of the country’s first international TV news channel France24.
Read more on the BBC website.
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