Institution: The Bourne Community College

'I am thrilled with the results the students have achieved in NVQ' –  Margaret Eva, Headteacher

Context
The Bourne Community College has been a Specialist Languages and English College since September 2007. The school, a mixed comprehensive in Southbourne, near Emsworth in Hampshire has 700 pupils aged 11-16. 

Key Objectives
To introduce an NVQ Languages course to improve motivation and results of students in KS4.

How the programme is organised
NVQ Language Units were introduced at Bourne Community College in 2004 in order to help improve the results of those students whose FFT and CAT data meant their predicted grade was D-G.

Of the first cohort 8 gained full Level 2 in all 4 skills of the NVQ matched to the 2005 National Language Standards.

There are approximately 40 students in Year 11  following an NVQ in French and 10 doing Spanish this academic year. There are also 60 following a French NVQ in the current Year 10. Staff at the school have developed their own course based on the National Language Standards. Over the past few years three staff in the school have gained the A1 assessor award and one has gone on to gain the V1 internal verifier award.  Before a qualified internal verifier was available, assistance was sought from West Sussex County Council who have an internal verifier on the languages team who works with several schools around the county until they have their own qualified staff. 

The work is carried out on a Modular Basis with substantial written and spoken tasks prepared in French along with many relevant Reading and Listening Tasks conducted. one of our Modular Tasks includes a Level 2 speaking and writing task about holiday destinations – many of our students use their visit to France if they are able to take part as a part of their coursework using it as the past visit or the future visit.

Our portfolios are very detailed and include FAR more than the minimum requirements for NVQ Level 2 as set out in the National Language Standards of 2005. We are currently adapting what we do to make sure it meets the new QCF standards, which were introduced from September 2010. If anything our course will have higher standard work in it as we see the Level 1 qualification has been downgraded.

We have since introduced Spanish NVQ and are about to introduce a small cohort of German NVQ. All these students are able to work in class, all are able to achieve some work in the foreign language, but many find remembering and regurgitating reams of words, which is the current GCSE specifications in 4 tasks counting for 60% of their final mark a real strain and thus their performance suffers greatly.

They will find NVQ a much more appropriate way of gaining a qualification at the end of the career learning languages.

Results/effect
'I am able to use all the work I did in my portfolio on my Air Stewardess Training Course at Gatwick' – Cara, student from 2006 Cohort (Level 2 in all four skills. Equivalent to B grade GCSE in performance points).

The NVQ has improved language results overall due to more students finding the portfolio building  more accessible for them.

2005: 9 students at Level 2, 2 students at  Level 1
2006: 8 students at Level 2, 7 students at Level 1
2007. No NVQ Cohort – GCSE only

The first group entered for NVQ (then optional) all failed to obtain a suitable grade in their Mock GCSE in French in Year 11 apart from one. So the rest of them did a conversion to NVQ and all but one got an equivalent of Grade B or C in NVQ. The second group were entered for NVQ by mutual choice and 8 out of 15 got Grade B equivalent – none was predicted to get GCSE A-C. 

Last summer we entered for NVQ in French and for NVQ in Spanish. Many but not all were able to attain Level 2 in their portfolios. We are very pleased with their results and more importantly so were the students, many of whom did not believe they would be able to achieve at GCSE and were very upset and reluctant to “have to” do a language.

The impact on the results in MFL and student motivation is vast. The Department had 0% A-C in French GCSE in the final year of languages for all in our school. Now as a Languages Specialist School with all students again “forced” into studying a language we have had including the results for NVQ results in the last summer of 84% of students gaining a Level 2 equivalent qualification in languages. Many of those NVQ students were targeted lower than a C grade in FFT and CAT data. They were able to achieve NVQ by completion of work set without the learning of it and subsequent regurgitation the GCSE requires.

'Once I understood that I was in control of what was taught and how it was taught I was much more happy with the whole idea of NVQ' – Language Teacher Recently Qualified Level 3 NVQ in Assessing (A1)

Future developments
Training has been offered for other teachers wishing to set up NVQ courses and it is hoped to do this again in the future. An online community has been set up for those teachers who attend our courses where sample materials are available. Many more items are available on our school’s international web pages and these will be added to.

Author: Andrew Starr, the Bourne Community College