Institution: King Edward VII Science and Sports College

Context
King Edward VII is an Upper School in Leicestershire and has around 1000 students who come from 3 feeder high schools in the area. With strong support from management around 65% of the cohort are entered for certification in languages at the end of Key Stage 4. Around 25 students each year are successfully entered for an Entry Level certificate and a further 220 are entered for the Edexcel GCSE. This policy should be set in the context of very weak support for languages in the mainly working class town which contains one of the most deprived wards in the county.

Key objectives
Given the large numbers at KS4 it was decided to tackle the problem of low take up into KS5. Despite many able linguists achieving a C grade or above, only a handful would elect to continue with A level French. Early entry GCSE at the end of Year 10 was available for a small group of students identified as 'more able', with progression to AS level in Year 11. 

How the programme is organised

• In 2006 a group of 22 students was identified as being ‘more able’ and were entered for GCSE French at the end of Year 10. Students had previously studied French for 3 years at KS3 and were given the option of joining the group based on a National Curriculum level of a 5ª or above. 
• This group is now studying AS French and the students will be given the choice to take either 1, 2 or all 3 AS level units at the end of Year 11.
• Feeder schools have worked in partnership in preparing a piece of coursework in Year 9.
• The students are also invited to a ‘More able’ day at the college in July of Year 9 where the course is officially launched.
• A letter to parents inviting the students to take part in the course is given out in Year 9 before the options for KS4 are chosen.
• The GCSE and AS course is delivered via a normal GCSE 5 hours per fortnight provision. This is supplemented by small groups working every 4 weeks with the Foreign Language Assistant on their speaking skills.
• There is a strong emphasis on homework tasks being completed each week and students are expected to support their learning by research on the Internet. It would be expected that students should spend on average 1-1/2 hours per week on homework.
  

Results/effect
Of the 22 students who were entered early, 14 achieved an A*-C and another 6 were within a few points of doing so. 3 of the students will only re-take GCSE in the summer of Year 11 and 5 will retake GCSE and the reading and listening AS level paper. It is too early to assess the impact of results on Modern Foreign Languages as the first group who were entered last year do not count on our results as they were still in Year 10.

Resources

• The use of prepared booklets prepared in-house has helped to reduce excessive copying and has allowed more creative tasks to be completed. The use of ICT has also played a major role in being able to accelerate the learning of these students. For example, when preparing for the speaking examination students used a template to transfer their answers from their coursework on themes of holidays, work experience and healthy living. Use has been made of the website Languages Online for grammar based learning.
• Example worksheets about work experience, personal relationships and health for use to bridge from GCSE to AS:
  Les avantages et les inconvénients de faire un stage (doc 51 KB)
  Et si c’était l’amour (doc 43 KB)
  Le tabagisme (doc 35 KB)
• 'Elan' AS course books were used to support the teaching of this group.
  

Future developments
Over the next few years it is expected that the college will place the most able students into the same timetabled group so that the most able from across the year can have access to the course. KS5 uptake should improve as more students either complete their AS course, retake units or go on to study A2 either in year 12 or over a 2 year period. This should not impact on the Advanced Level timetable as they would fit in with the other AS group but have fewer units to prepare for when it comes to revision for the exams.

Author: Mark Sutherland, King Edward VII Science and Sports College