What do you get when you bring together a bunch of kids from Hackney and the Metropolitan Police?  An extremely inspiring project, it would appear, judging by a new link-up between a Stoke Newington School and the local police. The partnership, which started in January, is already doing wonders to encourage native Turkish speakers to cherish their mother tongue and think about how they could use it to build a successful career in the future.

In a borough in which almost 30,000 crimes have been committed over the last year, it is easy to see how young people could find themselves on the wrong track in life. The Met Police are working hard to reduce this figure, by engaging with local communities and schools. Through their work with Stoke Newington students, they have not only been able to understand and influence local peoples’ perceptions of the police, they have made joining the police force a viable and appealing option for young people considering their future careers.

What’s particularly special about this project is that it’s engaging specifically with Turkish speakers - many of whom had up until now considered their language skills as something they were just born with. Now, they are seeing exactly how valuable they could be in the future, in particular as part of an organisation such as the police.

‘By introducing students to various officers and staff from different roles within the service, we hope to dispel some of the myths and overcome some of the barriers that may exist in people's minds about working for the police,’ said Tony Cox, who is leading the project for the Met.

The Stoke Newington students, all of whom were studying towards a GCSE or A Level in Turkish, were given the opportunity to quiz seven members of the police force on the ins-and-outs of their jobs. After the inevitable questions of ‘how much do you earn?’ and ‘can you carry a gun?’ the pupils seemed really impressed by the challenges and variety that joining the police could bring. They were then asked to act out a number of role plays designed to emphasise how Turkish language skills could come in handy. One group acted out a scene in which a row had broken out between two neighbours, one of whom was threatening violence, but all in Turkish. By understanding the language, the ‘police’ were able to deal with the situation very efficiently - something that would have been much more difficult to handle, had they not possessed such excellent language skills.

Head of Modern Foreign Languages at the school, Danielle Thom, said: ‘Watching them act out the scenarios, it was clear that the pupils had not fully grasped just how much of an asset their Turkish was in these situations. The rest of the room sat in silence, with no idea what was going on because it was all happening in a foreign language.’

In areas all over London, the police are crying out for speakers of other languages – and Turkish is high on their agenda.

‘The simple fact is that if we employ more people from the various Turkish speaking communities in London we will be able to deliver a more responsive and empathetic service, not only to Turkish speaking victims, witnesses and offenders, but to people from all minority communities - by actively demonstrating a commitment to encourage differences such as languages other than English, cultures, religions and customs within the service,’ said Tony Cox.

Esref Yilmaz, who has been teaching Turkish at the school for almost 20 years, thinks it’s very important that young people in the area recognise the significance of their language skills.

‘The project we have embarked upon with the Hackney Metropolitan police allows the pupils to see Turkish being used in real life situations. There are so many community languages spoken in the UK, especially in London. It is crucial that schools give young people every opportunity to nurture and develop these languages, so that they can be put to good use in the future, and provide new aspirations.’

The Stoke Newington partnership is part of a wider project developed by CILT, the National Centre for Languages, called Business Languages Champions. It is a project that helps develop links between businesses and schools, in order to demonstrate to young people how important languages can be in a wide range of careers. The programme links up around 200 schools and 300 businesses across England covering a whole range of industries, from creative and media to engineering. Boots, IBM and HSBC are just a few of the well-known companies that have got on board and teamed up with schools to give pupils an extra incentive to want to continue with languages.

Kathryn Board, Chief Executive of CILT, the National Centre for Languages, said: ‘With fewer and fewer pupils deciding to carry on with languages once they are optional subjects for study, it’s more important than ever that we find new ways to make language learning more appealing. Showing students real-life situations in which languages are useful, and encouraging them to think about their future career, is an excellent way of doing this.

‘It is also vital that we nurture the many languages that are spoken by different communities across our country. We are often criticised for not being good at languages, but actually one in ten secondary school students in the UK already has an additional language. We need to recognise the value of these languages, and celebrate the potential advantage they bring to our economy.’