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NVQ Languages at the Bourne Community College
'I am thrilled with the results the students have achieved in NVQ' – Margaret Eva, Headteacher
Context
The Bourne Community College has been a Specialist Languages and English College since September 2007. The school, a mixed comprehensive in Southbourne, near Emsworth in Hampshire has 700 pupils aged 11-16.
Key Objectives
To introduce an NVQ Languages course to improve motivation and results of students in KS4.
How the programme is organised
There are approximately 40 students in year 11 following an NVQ in French and 10 doing Spanish this academic year. There are also 60 following a French NVQ in the current Year 10. Staff at the school have developed their own course based on the National Language Standards. Over the past few years three staff in the school have gained the A1 assessor award and one has gone on to gain the V1 internal verifier award. Before a qualified internal verifier was available, assistance was sought from West Sussex County Council who have an internal verifier on the languages team who works with several schools around the county until they have their own qualified staff.
Results/effect
'I am able to use all the work I did in my portfolio on my Air Stewardess Training Course at Gatwick' – Cara Hunter Student from 2006 Cohort (Level 2 in all four skills. Equivalent to B grade GCSE in performance points).
The NVQ has improved language results overall due to more students finding the portfolio building more accessible for them.
2005: 9 students at Level 2, 2 students at Level 1
2006: 8 students at Level 2, 7 students at Level 1
2007. No NVQ Cohort – GCSE only
The first group entered for NVQ (then optional) all failed to obtain a suitable grade in their Mock GCSE in French in Year 11 apart from one. So the rest of them did a conversion to NVQ and all but one got an equivalent of Grade B or C in NVQ. The second group were entered for NVQ by mutual choice and 8 out of 15 got Grade B equivalent – none was predicted to get GCSE A-C.
'Once I understood that I was in control of what was taught and how it was taught I was much more happy with the whole idea of NVQ' – Language Teacher Recently Qualified Level 3 NVQ in Assessing (A1)
Future developments
Training has been offered for other teachers wishing to set up NVQ courses and it is hoped to do this again in the future. An online community has been set up for those teachers who attend our courses where sample materials are available. Many more items are available on our school’s international web pages and these will be added to.
Author: Andrew Starr, the Bourne Community College
