Institution: Swakeleys School, Hillingdon

Asset Languages in KS3

“I would highly recommend that colleagues in other schools look at the scheme as a possible way of accrediting students’ language skills, whatever their level.”  Rebecca Brewer, Asset Languages Coordinator. 

Context
Swakeleys School is an all-girls comprehensive school for 11 to 18 year olds near Hillingdon.  Having specialist humanities status, the school places a strong emphasis on languages and communication. Over 70% of Swakeleys pupils take a language in KS4, double the national average for secondary schools.

As well as French and German, Asset is being used at Swakeleys to provide accreditation for community language speakers. 21% of the intake speaks a language other than English as their home language and altogether 42 languages are spoken in addition to English. Although community language teaching is not timetabled, the listening and speaking skills of those with heritage language skills have been accredited under the Asset scheme. Pupils in Year 11 speaking Panjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Hindi and Polish have now received qualifications for their skills.

Key objectives
Introducing Asset as an end of year challenge for pupils in Years 8 and 9 to motivate and provid a record of achievement

How the programme is organised
The school first introduced Asset Languages in 2008/9 for all students in Year 9, some of whom were going on to take BTECs and therefore dropping languages in KS4. For the first year, all the candidates entered Asset’s Breakthrough [Entry] level exams in French or German. Students focused on the three skills of listening, reading and writing. Staff chose to use the June exam window as it gives pupils a target at the end of the year and their concentration doesn’t drop off earlier on.

The school refined its use of Asset the following year, by extending it to all Year 8 and 9 pupils. In June 2010, 180 Year 8 pupils and about 40 Year 9s taking French or German entered Asset exams at Breakthrough. A group of about 140 Year 9s were identified to take Preliminary level, the second stage of Asset tests which is equivalent to Foundation GCSE. This provided the Year 9s with a better challenge.

Results/effect
In the first year, nearly all students achieved the top grade possible at Breakthrough level which was excellent.

The results were excellent again in 2010  with 90% of Year 8 students achieving at least one Grade 3 (the top mark at Breakthrough) and 59% getting a 3 in all 3 skills examined. In year 9, 90 students (64%) achieved a grade 6 (the top mark at Preliminary) in at least one skill and 14 students gained a grade 6 in all 3 skills.”

Future developments
The school intends to continue to use Asset languages qualifications at Breakthrough with Year 8 students and at Preliminary for those Year 9 students who are continuing with German or French to GCSE.  Spanish  has been introduced for high flyers in Years 7 & 8 this year and it is hoped to enter Year 8 students for Breakthrough in Spanish too.  It is also hoped to be able to refine entries further at the appropriate level as staff become more familiar with the tests. It is anticipated  that community languages will also continue to flourish with accreditation through the Asset languages scheme and the school really values the contribution made by parents, teaching assistants and other teachers in helping staff to run these tests.

Author: Rebecca Brewer, Asset Languages Coordinator, Swakeley’s School