Students taking part in BBC News School Report presented their own news reports in a variety of languages. Working with BBC Radio Cymru, Ysgol Morgan Llwyd in Wrexham made the news in Welsh, five students from Elmfield School for Deaf Children in Bristol used sign language and Plockton High School in Ross-shire presented in Gaelic.
Read this story on the BBC website.
A second consultation is currently taking place to assess the need for a question on languages spoken in the Population Census 2011.
Read about this on the CILT website.
The government is to pilot short, work-focused English language courses in London to increase the employability of migrants, it was announced yesterday.
Read this story on the Education Guardian website.
A blueprint to create a sustainable future for Gaelic in Scotland was unveiled today by Patricia Ferguson, the Minister with responsibility for the language. The National Plan for Gaelic provides government, local authorities, public bodies and the private and voluntary sectors with a five year road map to take the language forward.
Read this article on the Scottish Executive website.
There are so many Polish people working in Selby that Selby College has now started running courses in Polish for English speakers.
Read this story on the York Press website.
If you don’t understand Makaton, you could soon be in the minority. Although created in the 1970s as a communications system for people with learning disabilities and speech disorders, Makaton’s combination of signs, gestures and printed symbols is now taught in many primary schools to spur the development of language in children.
Read this story on the Education Guardian website.
The BBC reports that bilingual children who learn in their family’s language as well as English do better at school, research suggests. Even second and third generation immigrant children with English as their stronger language could benefit. A team from Goldsmiths, University of London, analysed some primary school children in England using two languages in maths and English lessons. They found that, far from confusing them, having two languages deepened their understanding of key concepts.
Read the full story on the BBC website.
HMIE has launched a new publication on information and communications technology in learning and teaching via the website of Anderson High School in Shetland.
In preparing the report, called ‘Improving Scottish Education: ICT in learning and teaching’, HM Inspectors visited pre-school centres, primary, secondary and special schools, colleges, and community learning and development centres, as well as a number of education authorities.
The report finds that Scottish education has made great progress in building capacity for the increased use of information and communications technology (ICT), with ICT increasingly seen as a natural part of good learning and teaching.
Mention is made of the MFLE website on pp. 23 and 46 of the PDF document:
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LT Scotland) was playing a very important role in making available to learners and teaching staff a very wide range of online resources from its comprehensive website that covered almost 30 online services, ranging from Early Years Online to National Qualifications Online. Of particular note was the area of the website that focused on modern foreign languages, the Modern Foreign Languages Environment (MFLE).
A number of communities of practice had evolved round the wide range of subject associations linked to secondary education. Many of these associations had websites that had useful resources for teachers and a few supported discussion forums. Many teachers found these sites of particular value in identifying useful online learning and teaching resources and in promoting discussion of learning and teaching issues in their subject area. Of particular note were the website of SAGT for geography and the MFLE area of LT Scotland for modern foreign languages. The Masterclass community of trained ICT champions was hosted on the LT Scotland website.
It also spotlights some significant investments in ICT, including Glow, the national intranet for Scottish schools; improvements in infrastructure and bandwidth; and the supply of more equipment and software. Together these investments have provided Scottish education with great potential to enhance and enrich learning and teaching.
The report notes that learner and teacher confidence and competence in the use of ICT have both increased.
Visit the Anderson High School website to read the full report.
Murder, incest, suicide. Why deny kids the fun of the classics?
Natalie Haynes makes her case in the Times Online.
The Council of Europe issued its second report on the situation of minority languages in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2007, which says more effort should be made in favour of Irish, Welsh and Scots/Ulster Scots/Scottish Gaelic.
Read this story on the Euractiv website.
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