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Applied GCSE French at Babington Community Technology College
'The Applied GCSE in French has been totally liberating to me as a teacher ... The students are now starting to want to do French at Key Stage 4 at long last.' Judith Smith, Principal, Babington Community Technology College
Context
Babington is an inner city school in challenging circumstances. There are 1050 students, 40% of whom do not use English as a first language, and 48% qualify for free school meals. The school is a specialist technology college and it is seeking to add work related learning as a second specialism. Exam results are 52% 5 A*-C.
Key objectives
- To increase uptake of French in KS4
- To use genuine work-related contexts to motivate learners.
How the programme is organised
The course is based around two projects.
- Firstly, students build a website for French rugby fans coming to Leicester to watch a European Cup match. This is used both for the writing assessment and as a basis for spoken interactions.
Visit Babington Community Technology College's website to see the website created by the students.
- The second project is based around links with a company. Office Depot are Europe’s largest stationery suppliers. They have a warehouse and office in Leicester, and a branch in Paris as well as in every member state of the European Union. Visits are made to both branches. For more details about how the programme works, visit the section Principles of Teaching.
Babington Students at the Paris branch of Office Depot
Results/effects
Recently, uptake in languages at KS4 has been low with groups not reaching double figures. Since introducing the Applied GCSE French for business, uptake has increased to 26.
The first group of learners we taught this way obtained value-added scores of almost 2 grades and residuals of over 1 grade. All passed at A*-C. The value comes from the genuine contextualisation. Even the students who do not like rugby appreciate that The Leicester Tigers have big kudos within the city and they are impressed at being allowed to do some genuine work for them. The students also like the visit to Paris even the ones who claim at the outset that they never wanted to go to France.
'As a teacher I have found this course liberating. Death by baguette and middle class penfriend has gone, to be replaced by tasks the students see as relevant, yet the quality of language is unaffected.' Mark Penfold, Babington Community Technology College, SSAT Lead Practitioner for GCSE in Applied French
Future developments
The next steps are to look at how languages are delivered in KS3 so that it leads logically into the Applied GCSE and then to extend the range of languages. It is planned to extend the website idea by asking local businesses if they would like to feature on a website in 30 different languages to help their worldwide appeal.
Author: Mark Penfold
