One of the main criteria of the European Award is replicability – this project is about taking a great, innovative idea and sharing it in a way that can be sustained over time.

In 2006, Tile Hill School in Coventry won a European Award for its project on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Now the school has teamed up with Warwick University and the collaboration has won another award for the university’s innovative PGCE course.

Trainees on Warwick’s MFL PGCE programme receive training in CLIL in order to plan and teach two CLIL lessons in their final placement school.  Last year they chose to teach groups ranging from Year 7 to Year 13, while lesson content included Food Technology, history, geography, maths, PE, science and philosophy.

Trainees’ lesson evaluations demonstrated the positive impact of CLIL lessons - they quoted learners’ excitement and desire to learn, and their realisation that languages could be useful. Trainees were also inspired by the possibility of teaching real subject content through a foreign language and report that it has changed the way they think about teaching a language.

Judges were impressed by the university’s development of materials which allow other institutions to see how this practice can be incorporated into everyday teaching. Next year Warwick is introducing CLIL on the primary PGCE course, to reach an even wider audience. The project is now so well-established that there has been time to develop the training given to PGCE students at Warwick University into a sustainable model which, if taken up by other major institutions, could change the practice of language teachers everywhere. This project also receives the TDA ITT Partnership Schools Prize of £1,000.

Language(s): French, German, Spanish

The University of Warwick is one of the UK’s leading centres for teacher education, education research and professional development. It is committed to securing excellence in teaching and research, to  working in partnership with practitioners and to contributing to knowledge and practice in education.