Context
Hove Park School and Sixth Form is a Specialist Language College for 11-18 year-olds from the Brighton and Hove area. It is an inclusive school and is truly comprehensive in its intake.

Languages are studied by nearly all Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 students. During normal curriculum time, the school offers Italian, French, German and Spanish as core languages, with Chinese as an option for high achievers.

During the past four years NVQ has been significantly developed in Modern Languages. Level 1 is taught to all single language groups at Key Stage 3 and Level 2 is taken at Key Stage 4 as an alternative to GCSE for many students. There are also Level 3 groups in Key Stage 4 for students who have passed their GCSE in Year 9, plus Level 2 for beginners in Year 12.

The impact of NVQ on results is significant and is growing year on year. In the summer of 2009 the number of Year 11 and Year 12 students achieving a Level 2 NVQ was as follows:

94% in German, 81% in Italian, 63% in Spanish and 54% in French.

How the programme is organised
The series of lessons and resources that have been produced are designed to complement the Higher Hospitality and Catering Diploma. In the first instance, however, the materials were piloted with a Year 10 NVQ German group.

It is a small group of 8 students, most have studied German for three years and attained a Level 5 at the end of Year 9.  They are a well motivated group who find language learning challenging.

The lessons have been designed to be engaging for students and give them both kinesthetic and differentiated learning opportunities.

By offering a course that fits the content of the Hospitality and Catering Diploma line and that also allows students the opportunity to achieve a Level 2 NVQ (points are equivalent to Grade B at GCSE) it is envisaged that the uptake of a language in the ASL will increase.  The content is ‘real’ and relevant to these students and the chance to achieve another Level 2 qualification is important to their future choices.

Issues/Tips
There is a well established NVQ course at Hove Park School which makes it the obvious choice of accreditation for our Diploma students. However, accreditation could also be achieved in offering two or more skills through Asset Languages. Within the department there are two OCR A1 Assessors and an OCR V1 Verifier which makes the NVQ qualification easier to manage in terms of creating assessments and assessing student portfolios.

NVQ is quite a paper intensive qualification, but it is an ideal choice to allow teaching staff the opportunity to be creative and design a SOW relevant to the students in each and every teaching group.

Impact

• On learners
  The students were engaged and well motivated by the scheme of work as well as the teaching and learning resources developed in this pilot project. They enjoyed the learning about different areas of the industry and learning German that could be used in real life situations.
• On teachers
  During the pilot project one member of staff was responsible for planning, modifying and delivering the lessons.  However, in future years the materials will be translated into our other core languages and into Chinese and taught by other members of the NVQ teaching team at Hove Park School and within the Brighton and Hove Consortium schools.
• On the school
  Once the Hospitality and Catering Diploma is being taught in the consortium schools, opportunities for cross-curricular work with Leisure and Tourism and Business Studies colleagues will be developed.

Future developments
Two years ago we established a German exchange with the Albrecht-Thaer-Gymnasium in Hamburg and would like to explore the possibilities of developing this link further to offer work experience placements to our Key Stage 4 students.  We would look for funding from the British Council to assist with student mobility.

As student uptake on the Diploma course across the Brighton and Hove consortium improves, we would like to be able to develop and offer NVQ modules in the ASL to complement more of the Diploma lines.  It is unlikely that all students in an ASL language teaching group will be taking the same Diploma, so they would be able to gain an understanding of other Diplomas whilst achieving their Level 2 NVQ qualification.

Author: Louise Gibb, Hove Park School