Sorting out unfair grading at GCSE, with its immediate impact on pupil motivation to take a language, incentivisation for schools, and on the narrative of national "failure" is the easiest part of the failed system to put right. The tricky ones are What to do about Transition from KS2 to KS3 and How to Offer Mainstream Language Learning Post-16. And writing about KS2 is tricky for me. Because Primary teachers don't need Secondary teachers stepping in to opine on things they have no experience of.
So I need to make it clear that I am not commenting on teaching. The problems are not with teaching. The problems are systemic. And teachers are the ones making things work, even when the system is designed to stop people learning a language.
What are some of the issues at Transition from KS2 to KS3?
- Pupils start again in KS3, ignoring what was done in KS2, repeating basic content.
- Pupils start a new language in KS3, abandoning what was done in KS2.
- Pupils arrive at Secondary School from many different Primaries, all with different experiences of languages in KS2, including the study of different languages.
These systemic failures are worsened by the fragmentation of education provision and competition between schools which is a deliberate feature of the English education system, in the belief that this pushes up standards. And which teachers constantly have to try to overcome in order to provide a coherent experience for pupils.
This is the current situation: teachers in Primary and Secondary trying to reach out to each other to make things work. In a system that constantly erodes their efforts. Attempts to create a joined up 9 year language learning experience from KS2 to KS4 in a system designed to disrupt collaboration and planning. Decisions made in one school on things like curriculum options, timings, staffing, choice of language, resources, assessment... all have knock on effects across other schools' attempts to create coherence. Managing a joined up learning experience across multiple competing schools can see things fall apart as quickly as they are put in place. A small Primary School appoints someone who happens to speak Spanish. Or the German teacher leaves. Or the school aligns itself with one favoured destination Secondary, based maybe on being part of the same Trust or another school belonging to a rival Trust. A Secondary School decides to stop offering Spanish in Year 7 in order to focus curriculum time on French. Or decides to offer Mandarin as part of a national initiative. Or has different halves of the year group take different languages in an attempt to keep two languages going. A Sixth Form stops offering German, so other schools have to wonder if that means they should stop offering it at GCSE. These decisions are taken based on shifting priorities within an individual school and have challenging implications for language teaching within the school, let alone how to manage the implications for other schools and transition. Top down decisions are not made with languages as the top priority, nor with implications for other schools as the top priority.
In aiming to make a coherent experience of language learning, what chance does something put in place for pupils in Year 3 have of still being relevant wherever they end up 9 years later? There will have been so many changes, transitions and disruptions. A vision of coherence has to be more robust, more purposeful and more fundamental than individual teachers occasionally meeting to have a conversation about topics.
Language teachers are trying to make this work. But the system is against them. As quickly as you put something in place to try to make it work more smoothly, something somewhere changes or doesn't quite work out as planned. And nothing can overcome a situation where fragmentation means there's no coherence in what language pupils study, let alone a coherent experience of progression in the language.
This is not to say that we shouldn't keep talking to colleagues across sectors. But if teachers aren't managing to make something work, it's because it's unworkable.
What options are there to make the system more workable? What would be more robust than asking teachers to constantly shore up transition as it is washed away by the tides?
There is hope that politicians might begin to see the harm done to children's lives by a regime of high stakes competition, commercialisation and fragmentation. But that isn't going to happen quickly. We need to think about how different models can work within the landscape of disruption between schools and between sectors.
One model is to have "substantial progress" in one language at Primary School. The proposals in the Curriculum and Assessment Review would see all pupils in all Primaries having a common grammar and vocabulary curriculum. When they arrive at Secondary School, schools could assume "coverage" of this content and plan accordingly. That plan would still have to cope with individual pupils having different levels of attainment and having studied different languages. But it could reduce the level of variation that currently makes planning for transition so hard. This could reduce the amount of starting from scratch and repetition of content already seen in Primary school. This model could make the work done in Primary harder to "ignore" on arrival in Secondary. But starting a new language on arrival in Secondary would seem a total disruption to this model. These are possible outcomes, and they are a question of degree - aiming to reduce some of the issues rather than removing them. And potentially reducing one issue while compounding another. It seems linked to the idea of learning as "progress" rather than experience. And it sets schools the challenge of having staffing, resources, curriculum and transition in place to deliver the ambition of substantial progress. Is specifying content enough of a contribution to overcoming the system that currently defeats the best efforts of teachers?
Another model is to have more than one language taught in Primary. In itself this seems positive - the more languages pupils have some knowledge of the better! It also allows Primaries to deploy staff with different languages, and potentially lessens the level of language demanded of staff. By design it harnesses the synergies of how learning one language helps learn another, through learning about how languages work and how language learning works. It combines the idea of progress in the languages studied, with a deliberate awareness of the importance of the experience of language learning and learning about languages. This could be a more robust model for transition, where Secondary teachers know that pupils arrive as experienced language learners, with some knowledge of more than just one language.
There is also the Language Awareness model which proposes explicit teaching about language, languages and linguistics. This could remove the issue of pupils arriving at Secondary with progress in a language which is then ignored or abandoned. It would emphasise the nature of other languages being all around us in our community, and the wider world, and also within the English language itself. It would open pupils up to a world where cultures and language are explored together. Would it also include the idea that learning at this stage can be through stories, songs, rhymes, games, listening and joining in, routines and links to other subjects? Or in fact, would a better way to learn about language and linguistics be to focus on learning a language after all?
Reading through these 3 options, I think it's clear that as much as possible needs to be common to all of them. An experience of language learning that is an experience of learning through listening and joining in; that furthers understanding of language in our world and our world through language; that develops understanding of language learning by learning a language. Whether the headline is substantial progress or language awareness, the underlying experiences have much in common. Is this a ridiculous idea?
We are all familiar with these 3 options for Primary languages. The neglected one is the What Happens in Year 7 question. How can we make sure we are building on pupils' learning in KS2, consolidating the basics without repeating content or ignoring their knowledge? Can we have a much more original and creative start to KS3? What would this look like? I would want to see consolidation of phonics, ground rules for active participation in speaking, a focus on developing pupils' abilty to use their language, through cultural content and contact. Our Year 7 French Art Exhibition is an example of how we try to deliver these aspects in a way that will be different to what pupils did at KS2.
The government seems to have gone for the Substantial Progress in One Language model. If anything, I think this is the one that does least to remove the systemic barriers. In fact it may exaggerate them if pupils have made substantial progress in a language that they then do not continue with. It is ambitious in its aims and therefore in the challenges it sets Primary schools, even if these challenges are now to be more clearly defined. Is the danger that in our fragmented system, Primary schools will focus even more on meeting this defined content, rather than on the experience of learning a language and continuity into KS3?
I am glad the government has identified KS2 to KS3 Transition as one of the greatest issues. Their response seems to be to challenge teachers to do the same thing better. This feels unwise. Teachers are the ones who make the unworkable almost work. Teachers are the ones seeing their work eroded in the Sisythean task of building progression only to see it crumble away in the face of the system. I can see that they have gone for the option they see as the most ambitious for pupil progress. Is there wisdom in this choice? Ambition is good. Workable is also good. The calculation has to include both. My instinct is that if teachers are barely managing to make something work, it's because it's unworkable.
This post is in a series called "Challenging the System". I don't seriously think we can change the system in that pupils will inevitably continue to move from Primary to Secondary. There is disruption at this stage, with cohorts splitting up and new intakes of pupils coming together with different previous experiences. We need to accept that this disruption is real. And choose models in KS2 and in KS3 that recognise this disruption and make the most of what really matters in learning languages. Academic assessed and measured "progress" in grammar and vocabulary may not be the only factor alongside experience, attitudes, understanding, communication, ambition and enjoyment.
No comments:
Post a Comment