Institution: Slough Grammar School

Context
Slough Grammar School is a large multicultural and mixed school of about 1200 students, close to Heathrow airport and British Airways. The school has been a Language College since 2002, with Science as a second specialism and 12 languages are taught. All students have to study a language, at least up to GCSE.

Key objectives
The school began offering the British Airways Flag Award to their students in 2003. This has helped to build a strong business link with British Airways. Among other things, students attend Language days at British Airways Learning centre and British Airways staff attend language courses at the school. All Year 11 students take the “British Airways Flag Award for Schools” in the summer term and in the language they are studying for their GCSE (Spanish, French and German). Students who are dual linguists take the award in both languages.

The BA Flag Award helped me practise for my GCSE oral exam – Year 11 student

How the programme is organised

• Staff need to be trained to deliver and examine the award. The training of teachers and language assistants is free and it is a good preparation and rehearsal for the GCSE. If you have a language assistant, you can get him/her trained to be a Flag Award examiner which can minimise teacher cover needed.
• Students then need to be prepared for the exam. It is easy to prepare the students for this award, as it is GCSE based. The content is covered over Years 10 and 11. The exam consists of a short conversation on 3 different topics, the reading of a short BA announcement and 2 role plays. Finally, the students listen and translate short announcements in English and the target language. The pass mark for the exam is 40%. One lesson is spent explaining the examination to the students.

Evidence of success

Students love it as they get a certificate and a badge from British Airways. You can see them wearing the badge proudly even when they are in Year 12. The students see the relevance of learning a language, as it is used in a practical working environment of an airport by a large and international company. It also helps the students develop skills such as translation.

"It has opened up future career possibilities that I never thought I had before" Year 11 student

The British Airways Flag award for Schools is part of our Language College bid. Every year, language teachers are sent to be trained at British Airways. Most of the  language staff at the school have now been trained in Spanish, German and French. Community Language teachers are now being trained as well.

Future developments
It is now hoped to offer the opportunity to the students to take this award in Community languages: Arabic, Portuguese, Urdu and Panjabi.

Author: Christèle Claveau, Slough Grammar School