NPP 5: An in depth interview reacting to the idea that our French Exhibition could have aspects which Distract from Language Learning.

 As a department we love our French Exhibition where each pupil in Year 7 creates an artwork and describes it in French. But central to our National Priorities Project, is the idea that introducing creativity and communication so early could disrupt the carefully sequenced conceptualisation and mechanical rehearsal of accurate language. So when I put it to the teachers that there are aspects of the Art Exhibition which could be a distraction from the nitty gritty of language learning, how did they react? In another post I have written up our staff survey. But what better way to get at the issues than to interview one of the teachers. You can listen to the interview here on YouTube, along with images from last year's exhibition. Or read on...

Here's the transcript of what we said:

Vincent: You were saying the other day how much you love the art exhibition project.

Kirsty: So, I think the thing that I really like about it is that because the children can work independently and do something that they're interested in, and then we bring that back into our French lessons after we've done all the work on it. So, it's kind of got so many steps to it and it's showing those steps and that progression, and at the end of the day, the work that they produce—the French they produce—is so brilliant! They don't even realise they've produced it as well as they have until you look back at it. And they get such a sense of achievement out of it. That is genuinely... they all enjoy it, they all remember it, and they all remember what the, like, silly expressions there were. I can't even remember what they are now, but, you know, like the extraterrestre and things like that, which is not part of what they would possibly normally have learned, but they get so much out of it. And...

Vincent: What did you think the other day when I said maybe some of these things are bad things?

Kirsty: I don't think—I don't think you can say that. I think from my point of view, it is that idea of actually using language for a real situation. It is that—okay, it's a slightly forced situation—but it is actually them communicating in a different way than they used to. And actually, I think that's really special for them. It's that feeling of, "I can do this and I can achieve." Perhaps also, if there's a student who's not the most confident with their languages, it still gives them the space and chance to do it. And if I think of some of the students I've worked with this year, where actually, genuinely, they were struggling with it, and as soon as we put the—the picture in front of them, and as soon as they created their piece of artwork, they had then had ownership of it. You know, some of my students did things like... I had a boy who did all about a football stadium because he's a massive football fan. That was completely different to anything we'd done before, but we were able to kind of manipulate what he'd been learning to suit his kind of context for—for that piece of work. And he was so proud of it at the end of it. And I've got so many cases of that, you know. I had a student's work all about a giraffe because that was their favorite animal. And there are so many times where... what I also like about it is that we then do go back over the previous unit as well because they all do a little biography, but they do a biography that's anonymous because we say, "Because of GDPR, we don't want them to put their real name." So they then have a fantasy family, which is also really special as well. So, you know, there are so many positives to what they can do with it. And the work they produce at the end of it is not what I would say is typical of Year 7.

Vincent: Do you find—you're saying how individual they are—are you having to do a lot of spoon-feeding of stuff that's a one-off?

Kirsty: No, absolutely not. Because how we've set it up, and how I set it up with the classes, is our special, like, what I'd call our "keys." So it's like, we definitely—we color-code a lot of work before we're doing it. So we are, "Have you included your opinion sentences? Have you included your adjectives to describe things? Have you included...?" And we have like a checklist of about nine things. So as long as they fit within those parameters, they can then add the detail with that from the core vocabulary that we give at the end of the booklet.

Vincent: Do you think it gets in the way of pupils who want to just write something about their picture that's not as structured?

Kirsty: Um, I don't know that I've actually thought of that. Partly because when we're doing it, we have it so... all of my classes just buy into the fact that we have got to produce this amazing piece of work, and how it is going to be for an art exhibition that's in the public domain, that people are going to see, people are going to come from outside of school to see it. Um, and I think that does make them want to make it better, so they want to include all of those key things that I've said so that they can, you know, "This is what I'm capable of."

Vincent: So the structures are there. You might have to give your pupil something relevant for theirs, but they do have the language to do it.

Kirsty: Yeah.

Vincent: Um, accuracy?

Kirsty: Redraft and redraft. And we have worked really hard with them—I know that I have worked really hard with them—to make sure that they are understanding those fundamentals. My classes are very much the—the kind of—the focus of the un, une, le, la, les all the way through. And so it's almost... if we make a mistake, we can see the mistake, so therefore we correct the mistake. They also—they do peer assessment, as in they look at each other's work to say, "Well, I think there might be a mistake here." And then I will go and be checking with them. And it's—it's such a lovely working atmosphere from them. "I think there might be a mistake here, miss," and how they change it is brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Vincent: And do you think this then feeds through to other units that they do, for the pupils?

Kirsty: So, I know that I always use this again whenever the—the gender conversation comes up, we will always go back to that, and opinions certainly is something that we're always reminding them of as well. So, I kind of do a "by the end of Year 7, I am expecting you all in every in every piece of work we ever do to be including your il y a expressions as well," and the fact that we are reinforcing that in so many times... So, you know, I could guarantee every single one of my students, if I said, "Tell me your five opinions in French," categorically would do that. And we would be able to do that about any context because we're so confident with how we do it.

Vincent: And—and as a teacher, then, if what we're doing now is looking at our whole curriculum through this kind of lens, what are the kind of lessons from this thinking about the art exhibition that we can now use to fully use to think about what goes well and what doesn't go well and what needs to change in our whole curriculum?

Kirsty: So I think for me, what I do like about this is what I don't think we get again, and I think this is something we're working on, is that kind of memorable activity. And I think that is so special. So we've actually got a hook for Year 7, and it's a beautiful hook. But I think when we reach the end of Year 8, it's then the, "How do we keep that hook in place?" And I think that's something that as an institution, we've got to try and work on. Because trying to do it at some academic kind of discussion point of, "To do your GCSE," I don't know that many 13, 14 year-olds have that kind of emotional maturity to go, "Oh yeah, that's why I'm interested in learning about this."

Vincent: Would the letters to France fulfill that?

Kirsty: When they worked well with my Year 8 class a couple of years ago, they were absolutely brilliant, and the students wanted to learn new things that they could say to write back to their partner. They all had a partner, and it really did work well. It was quite a logistical nightmare, and I think that's something that you have to be aware of is how—you know, sounds really awful, but teacher time. And partly because you couldn't—you didn't know in advance, it's like the unpredictable text, isn't it? So, what is a Year 8 student from France going to write to a Year 8 student from the UK? You don't know necessarily. Hopefully, the teachers will have given them guidance in the way that we gave ours guidance. So there is that kind of level of unpredictability about it, which is quite interesting. But again, I think if you keep within the context of, "Let's talk about things that we're comfortable with, that are kind of well-known to us," everyday situations—I think that will make it a better communication method.

Vincent: And are these exactly the same questions, then, as we had for the Year 7 art thing, that it's like what I can say versus what I want to say?

Kirsty: Absolutely.

Vincent: And then also someone's going to be reading this, I need to make it good?

Kirsty: Yeah. So actually, one of the things that I always say to the students is, "Look, you haven't been speaking French for that long, so this is not where you are going to try and go into the detail and the minutiae of X, Y, or Z, but it is what can you do, what can you achieve." And what you can achieve is absolutely brilliant, and this is the best level that you can get to at this point. So I think that's also where, when you put it in the context of like a Year 8 real situation... Yes, of course they want to talk about the latest pop songs or whatever, but actually, they also want to talk about things that happen in their world and happen that they understand from the other—other children's worlds as well. So like we were just talking about the French school system. Trying to explain the French school system to the UK is so interesting. So, when I did the email conversations, or the email, exchange, we would do half in French, half in English, and always they did the same. And it worked really well, so you would do half where you had a bit of the expertise, but half where you were kind of supporting the other person. So, it worked so nicely, and that was really good for them.

Vincent: Brilliant. Thank you very much. 

Next Post: Using our insights from the Art Exhibition to design our Department Inclusion Plan.

NPP 4: A Languages Department reacts to the idea that you can have too much creativity and too much communication.

 Our Year 7 French Exhibition is centred around the idea that communication and creativity should spark motivation, drive language learning, and allow pupils to grow as language learners in a multilingual and intercultural world. But what if injecting the demand for creativity so soon is harmful? Might it lead us to gloss over the important nuts and bolts of nitty gritty language learning? Might it sweep accuracy under the carpet? Might it lure pupils into saying things they can't, and things that they will never see or need again? These are the questions we are asking ourselves in our National Priorities Project. And if we can debate them in the context of the French Exhibition, can we also draw useful conclusions for elsewhere in our curriculum?

So first of all, how do we react as a Department to the idea that you can have too much creativity and too much communication too soon? Do our values clash with this idea? Does our classroom experience bear it out?

I asked the other members of the Department to fill in a survey, in order to document our initial thoughts as we start the project and to kick off our discussions:

I hope this survey sets down a baseline for our National Priorities Project. Not in that I want to see people's ideas change. But in setting up a challenge to our ideas that will stimulate us to question and justify them. And which will lead us to document experiences, insights and implications. This post starts out on that journey, with an in depth interview with the remaining member of the department (apart from me) whose views weren't documented in this survey. It's a great read!

As I write this, I can see that already as a department we have made strides beyond these initial thoughts. This survey saw people's answers very much focused on the French Exhibition, rather than on the lessons for the rest of our curriculum, but I will need to write another post on how we have already taken the next step.

Next Post: Listen to an interview with a member of the department who loves the Art Exhibition project.

NPP 3: The Continuum from Mechanical Exercises to Communicative Tasks

 One of my kids who is a bit of a mathematician is very cross with Gauss. She maintains that he is only famous because he lived back when no-one had discovered anything. Famously in his Primary School, the teacher, wanting a quiet afternoon, set the class to add up all the numbers 1 to 100. Gauss did it in less than a minute. My daughter's Year 3 teacher set her class the same task. And like Gauss she did it instantly. But until appearing in this blog, she hasn't had the world-wide fame accorded to Gauss. Hence her grumpiness.

I seem to have done something similar with Littlewood's Continuum of Communication.

It started with this post on what seem to be two meanings of the word "meaning". There is lexical meaning: I know that chien means dog. And there is the creation of meaning: saying something you want to say. Which I suppose is called communicative meaning.

Of course, while they seem distinct, there is a continuum between the two sorts of meaning. Here are some examples starting from "lexical" and moving to "communicative."

• Using translation to show knowledge of the lexical meaning of words in isolation
• Using translation to show knowledge of the lexical meaning of words in a sentence
• Creating sentences in order to show they can create sentences that make sense
• Using transactional language in a simulated situation
• Creating writing to show they can construct paragraphs that are coherent and meet linguistic criteria
• Creating writing that is fun/imaginative in order to show what they can do with the language
• Creating writing that is true but conventional
• Creating writing that is personal for the purpose of practising the language
• Creating writing that is argumentative, controversial, creative for a purpose or audience because the teacher told them to
• Using transactional language in a real situation of need or want
• Creating writing that is argumentative, controversial, creative for a purpose or audience because they want to

Researching this, I discovered that Littlewood had produced a very similar continuum. And not only on a purely theoretical linguistic basis, but in the context of language learning. I am temporarily avoiding reading more, so that I can firm up my own thinking.

The questions I have are:

Is this continuum also a progression model? Should we start with pre-communicative mechanical exercises and delay communication? This is what is recommended in the Ofsted research review Novice/Expert approach, delaying communication until a high grade at GCSE is reached.

Or is it desirable to inject communication at a much earlier stage in the learning process? Are purely mechanical exercises ever desirable?

What does it mean for our French Art Exhibition, which is at the heart of our National Priorities Project?

And does examining the question through the lens of the French Art Exhibition have lessons for our curriculum as a whole?

Having met as a department to start this process, we already have insights to share. I will document them and then read up some more to see how Littlewood's ideas tie in to our experience.

Next Post: How do the department react to the idea that the Art Exhibition Project could be a Bad Thing?

NPP 2: Defining Interculturality

 This is the second of a series of blogs documenting our National Priorities Project journey in thinking about Interculturality and how it meshes with the cogs of language learning. I proposed examining our French Exhibition where every pupil creates an artwork, writes about it in French, and then the paying public come to see their work. I wrote here on the Exhibition and the questions around whether it drives learning. But does it count as "Interculturality"?

Some members of the department suggested boosting the Cultural content of the unit, with more texts or videos exploring art and artists. And this is certainly something we can develop - always bearing in mind how such texts interface with language learning.

But this was not my primary interpretation of Interculturality. I wanted to use the project as an example of pupils taking on a new language as part of growing up in a wider world where English is just one of many languages. To show them that languages have a place starting right here in their own community and can be a part of their own lives.

This interpretation was firmed up at the National Priorities Project launch day at UCL in June. Interculturality is about our pupils stepping through a "sliding door" into a multicultural and multilingual world. It is NOT about looking through a window at other cultures. It's the idea of "otherness" that we are trying to escape from. Aspects of cultures may seem exciting and "exotic" from our perspective. And we juggle between the idea that people are different and people are all the same. Our project is part of an evolution of our pupils' identity. Not just how they see the world and their place in it, but how they see themselves.

Lovely to have that defined. But does it matter for language learning? There are some clues in this post on the importance of creating meaning. But that is the question we are seeking to answer...

Except...!

Except that the other big insight from the day at UCL, is that we are not trying to answer all the questions. We are not going to solve the dichotomies in language teaching between grammar and communication, or between accuracy and creativity. What we are looking for are experiences and insights to share.

Next post: The communicative continuum.

UCLE/UCL NPP 1: The Brief. Interculturality and its direct links to language learning

 I am writing this in July, but I wish I had written it in June, and I won't be able to publish it until September. Because that's when the official "Comms" launch of the National Priorities Projects takes off. But I need to document what we are doing as we go along, because I can already see it's going to be an important journey that we are on as a department, and hopefully we can take you along with us for the ride!

The brief was a project that explored Interculturality and its relevance to language learning, which could take place between June 2026 and January 2027, ready to be written up and disseminated from February of 2027.

We decided to propose a project around our Year 7 French Art Exhibition. Every pupil in Year 7 creates an artwork and writes the description card in French. Their work goes on display to the paying public in a local Windmill exhibition space. It's a project we have run for at least 12 years at the Windmill, and before that with the exhibition happening in school.

The aims of the project are threefold:

1. The simple mechanics of the project can be shared with other schools who find it an attractive idea and see the benefits for pupils as language learners. The French Exhibition is something we know is feasible, deliverable and replicable.

2. To explore whether the project is indeed beneficial, particularly in terms of whether it has impact on the explicit learning of the language. The Art Exhibition itself isn't new for us. What we want to do is to interrogate it and examine our preconceptions. It may well turn out to contribute to language learning, but can we put our finger on in exactly what ways it drives progression?

3. To extrapolate from what we learn from examining the impact of the Art Exhibition and apply those lessons to the rest of our curriculum. And to share those insights and experiences with other schools.

I have written here about the French Exhibition and what it is supposed to deliver. It is intended to show pupils that they can be creative in the language from the very start. And that learning a language is about communicating, not just the mechanics of building sentences.

On the other hand, in this post, I wrote about the idea that demanding creativity and communication from learners so early could be a mistake. Does it lure them into trying to say things they can't, creating work full of errors? Does the artwork distract from the nitty gritty of language learning? Should pupils instead be concentrating on rehearsing accurate sentences exemplifying carefully sequenced grammar? Does describing an artwork lead to learning "one off" words and structures which will never be seen again and just be forgotten?

I thought I had an answer to these questions: that grammar and communication are not incompatible. Because if every learner creates their own picture, we have to equip them with the grammatical knowledge to write their own individual description. But what if I am using this argument to persuade myself that the French Exhibition is a "good thing"? What can we do to be sure?

These same questions apply not just to the French Exhibition, but to all our work as a Laboratory School in identifying what works and what doesn't work in teaching and learning. It links to our work this year on the ideas of our keynote speaker David Didau, who we were lucky enough to host for an INSET day in January 2026. Not in order to implement his ideas. But in order to discuss, reflect and examine our curriculum. For languages, the main take-away from his session was the idea that pupils should be practising the mechanics of constructing error free sentences. I reflected on the implications of this here. Our French Exhibition would seem to fly in the face of his advice.

It also links to our work on cognitive load, in particular to our construction of a Department Inclusion Plan. If we want to engineer classroom tasks such that the cognitive load of the task is pitched perfectly for individual learners, so that there is the right level of challenge and support, then we need to identify the "core instructional content". What exactly is it that we want pupils to learn, and what is extraneous? Things we may want to do in order to make the work attractive, may actually be a distraction from the learning. We have been told by Ofsted in their "research review" and accompanying webinars that language learning should focus on the nitty gritty of the language itself, "boiled down" to the basics and that pupils should not move on until they are secure. Does this mean that our learners who require most support should have a restricted diet of carefully sequenced grammar and high frequency vocabulary with no extra demands or distractions? Many of us would find that idea unpalateable.

And if we are going to be examining what it is that really matters when pupils are learning a language, the sequencing and demands of the course, the engineering of tasks... then we can use this to review our whole curriculum and its resources, and in the process explore the parameters of our shared vision and differing values as members of the same languages department.

That's the unofficial rationale of the project. The real rationale of the project, rooted in our reality. I am sure on the form I filled in I tried to tick a few more boxes on the list of criteria, which I can examine in future posts. For starters, I need at some point to write about how Interculturality plays out in this project. And I am holding back on all the things we have discussed and discovered as a department already in the first month of the project. I can see that it's going to be a real eye-opener of a journey, so I'm glad I've got the starting point documented, even if you can't read it until September. There's more to come. Lots more!

Next Post: Definining Interculturality.

Why everything you have been told about La Casa de Bernarda Alba is Wrong

 La Casa de Bernarda Alba. Everything you have been told about it is wrong.

1. The Stage Set

A white-walled bare stage set with stark lighting making a binary contrast with the cast of characters wearing mourning black, symbolising the triumph of purity over life and representing Lorca's "documental fotográfico". Or something. Because it's actually nothing of the sort. 

Act one specifies curtains with bows and frills, pictures on the wall of fantastic scenes of kings and nymphs from legends. The daughters refer to these, recalling fondly how the bizarre stories of the black man fighting the lion coloured their childhood imaginations. Yes, in act three, it specifies that the decor should be of utmost simplicity. But if you think the setting of the play is like that from the beginning, you are missing the point. The point is there is a slow transition, starting from something realistic, to something more symbolic.

The stage directions for act one describe what could be a typical rural house in Andalucia. Thick white walls, rounded arched doorways with jute curtains and wicker seats. And if anything it resembles this kind of house in Sacromonte [video in link] rather than some aristocratic mansion. (More on this later.)

It's daytime; we start with humdrum chat and menial tasks from the servants. Things seem normal. By act three we find ourselves in a different world. The "thick walls" are now more of an effect of light, "azuladas" with the "fulgor" of the interior rooms projected onto the stage. It's night time and the characters look up to the stars and outside to the world of animal noises in the corral. Things have changed. The walls that keep you in are in your mind.

2. Bernarda is in control

Before we meet Bernarda, La Poncia describes her as "dominanta, mandona" and says she is capable of sitting on your heart for a year to watch you die. Although it turns out La Poncia is very fond of saying this kind of thing. And everywhere you look, you see analysis of the play claiming Bernarda is tyranical, and that the tragedy of the play is the direct result of her over-bearing control. Except even before we meet her, her own servants are stealing her chickpeas and sausage. And one of them had been stealing Bernarda's late husband. Famously her first and last words are "Silencio" and this is important. Because far from controlling anything, all Bernarda can do is hush things up or lie about them. Her opening "Silencio" is to the servant who has just told us about her relationship with Bernarda's dead husband. Her closing "Silencio" is to insist on the lie that her daughter died a virgin.

The play is full of examples of Bernarda denying reality. Almost immediately, she corrects the neighbour who says that Pepe el Romano was in the church. As the drama develops, La Poncia constantly tries to warn Bernarda, but she refuses to see. She claims her vigilance puts her in control, but she is clearly blind to what is going on, and ridicules La Poncia for supposedly maliciously inventing "la cosa muy grande". And as Bernarda says, even if something was going on, news of it wouldn't get beyond the walls of the house. Because Bernarda isn't in control. She's in denial.

3. Martirio doesn't like men

There is an idea that the sisters are well-delineated characters with their own voice and defined symbolic roles. You could just as well say that they are hard to tell apart visually, linguistically and thematically. Are they characters or more of a chorus? Is it the case that Lorca's women have individual voices, or is it (as in Blood Wedding), the poet's voice that we hear? Anyway, supposedly Martirio is the doesn't like men one. She feels she is ugly and scared and has happily put aside any desire for a man. Somehow this also makes her twisted and destructive.

In the play she does talk about being scared of men. She tells us how since she was little, she would look out into the corral at the men. She was struck by how strong, loud and masculine they were. And she would nervously imagine that one day one of them might want to come and embrace her. She seems to have spent quite a lot of time imagining this! And of course there was the frustrated episode where she stood in her nightshirt at the window waiting for Enrique Humanes to come as promised. And the sly comment by one of her sisters, probably Amelia, that Martirio seems much better since the new doctor came to the village. So Martirio's desire and jealousy isn't some unfathomable wrench away from her true character. It was there all along.

4. Bernarda is an aristocrat

Bernarda has a house. And some land and an "era" for threshing. And servants and farm hands. And some animals that live in a corral attached to the back of the house. She's a farmer. 

She thinks she's better than other people, including Enrique Humanes because although he now has his own farm hands working for him, his own father had once been a gañán. And she thinks that none of the local men are good enough for her daughters. But as La Poncia says, if she went to another town looking for husbands, then her daughters would be the poor ones. Their only inheritance is "pan y uvas" and their tragedy at the end of the play is as much being trapped in poverty as it is about desire.

5. Bernarda bricks up the house and no-one is allowed in for 8 years

Bernarda does not brick up the doors and windows. She doesn't even say she is going to. She says, "think of it as if...". When she talks about eight years, we already know that this house is full of people who throw out exaggerated timeframes. Sitting on someone's heart for a year. Sitting in a locked room spitting on someone... for a year. It's also not the case that no-one comes into the house. Or even that men are banned from the house. There are 200 women on stage at one point. And a presumably similar number of men in the patio. The lace salesman comes into the house after the supposed edict of mourning, and the man who comes to sort out the inheritance. And the neighbour Prudencia pops in. And Pepe el Romano is hanging around at people's windows. At the end of act two it's quite possible that most of the family go out into the street to throw stones at someone. There is a period of mourning, and it seems the trip to the noria to eat watermelons is cancelled. But people come and go, life goes on.

6. It is a portrayal of the morals of society of the time

Lorca gave the play the sub-title of "Drama de Mujeres en los Pueblos de España". And it is set in small town society in the early 20th Century that is timeless in its conservative attitudes. But what goes on in the house is down to Bernarda's delusions rather than a strictly puritan society.

The world outside the house is one of nature, crops and animals rivers and norias, flowers and olive groves, songs and music and dancing, desire and fertility. The harvesters with their music and fun and their bodies like árboles quemados. The lady in the sequined dress with the accordeon. Paca la Roseta who went "muy conforme" with flowers in her hair, carried like a guitar by Maximiliano on his horse to spend the night in the olive grove while her husband was tied up to a pesebre.

This all contrasts with the thirst, heat, stagnant water and poison referred to inside the house.

Of course, there is the horrifying example of la hija de la Librada, beaten and stoned to death by the neighbours after killing and hiding her illegitimate child. But it's Bernarda who equates her sin with her sexual transgression, "carbón ardiente en el sitio de su pecado", rather than for the death of the child. And Adela knows that the whole village will be against her if she steals her sister's husband and that she will have to go and live in a shack by the river, like Pagnol's baker's wife.

But Bernarda's motto that "una hija que desobedece deja de ser una hija y se convierte en una enemiga" is just Bernarda's personal morality. La Prudencia, for example, has another view. She says "yo dejo que el agua corra". And we have the ridiculous example of La Prudencia's husband who having fallen out with his family, refuses to go out of his front door and instead sneaks out the back with a ladder. Bernarda thinks this makes him "a real man".

I am not going to get further into the idea that this is a portrayal of Franco's Spain. Because it's clearly not. Whatever the internet says.

7. It is Lorca's masterpiece

It is possible to cover up for some of the unfinished elements of the play. Straight forward textual "corrections" in details like "el día de la muerte de tu padre" being changed to "el día de la misa de tu padre". Or the confusion over ages. Or the difference between "the one who loved their father" and "the only one their father loved" in reference to Magdalena.

Then there's the inconsistencies. In act one there is famously no river. Whereas in act three one has now been provided. Or the ambiguity over whether the action takes place over the afternoon, evening and night of a single day, or a longer period of time. Or whether the daughters are clearly delineated characters or an undifferentiated chorus. We can construe this as a clever shift in reality, undermining our certainties in a transition to a crescendo of symbolic meaning taking over from reality. But much as we like to write about these ideas in our essays, the play doesn't really bear them out.

Especially with the ending. As well shall see.

8. Lorca is criticising an anti-feminist society

I can't get away from the idea that Lorca is deeply misogynistic. He puts women's suffering on stage for our entertainment. He uses exotic stereotypes of Andalucian passion, death, violence, extremes, in an act of cultural appropriation where women are decorative and disposable. Just as in Romance Sonámbulo.

The "tragedy" of the play is only in its final moments. Until then it's about the vigorous stuggle of desire against ineffective repression. With extra ingredients of jealousy and denial for good measure. With a bit of superficial prefiguring with the bad luck of the spilled salt, shooting stars and pearl engagement ring. And the clumsy "te vas a tronchar el cuello".

We can find other ways to explain away the offensive ending, to pretend it's not about the spectacle of disposable women. We could say that the play is a projection of Lorca's own suppressed desires. I am sure it is. But how do we interpret the ending? That all of a sudden the manipulating super ego leads to the death of the id? What psychological lesson does Lorca want us to learn? Or is it still just drama for drama's sake?

Or we can intellectualise it and say that in Ancient Greek theatre this form of non-penetrative death is coded for virginity? Antigone in her innocence. Jocasta, rejecting her marriage and her motherhood. And the idea of death predicated on a lie like Theseus killing Hippolytus. Does this help? Or is this further incrimination of Lorca using the death of women to display his erudition?

This is the Lorca play that leaves me feeling uncomfortable with the idea of a man portraying a drama of feminine desire and suffering, for our entertainment, ending with the contrived spectacle of the death of a young woman. It's the work that acts as the key to unlock the adoration and hagiography of the Lorca of whom no criticism will be admitted. Especially when so many of the things written about it are wrong...

GCSE Results 2026

 There seems to be some improvement in some of the grades allocated to Languages at GCSE this year.  We know that in terms of the key points of grade 4+ and grade 7+, the allocation of grades has been kept in line with previous patterns. But there may be some shifts for example to more 6s and fewer 5s in French. I am waiting for FFT education datalab to update their series of blog posts on severe grading.

Meanwhile, what can we say about the grades?

Firstly, we should question any narrative that this is in some way down to the new GCSE being better. When a new GCSE is introduced, Ofqual are very careful to make sure there is parity of grading carried over from the previous GCSE. The grade boundaries are shifted to make sure the number of pupils awarded each grade is kept the same year on year (with small tweaks depending on the cohort's KS2 SATs results).

There are 3 possible reasons for improved grades being allocated in languages.

1. A deliberate decision to allocate better grades as a tacit recognition of long-standing unfairness.

2. A stronger cohort of pupils taking languages. This could accompany the drop in numbers taking languages, possibly as a result of some schools starting to remove compulsion at KS4, seeing a change to the profile of the cohort. This would be particularly hard to judge this year, given that there was no KS2 SATs baseline for this year group.

3. A deliberate decision to allocate better grades to make the new exam look successful. This could take advantage of the lack of SATs results to address some of the unfairness in grading without having to acknowledge it.

On this third point, there are some aspects associated with the new GCSE that may have needed finessing. The Sample Assessment Materials produced by the board were generally recognised as being much more accessible than previous materials, with pupils scoring much higher marks especially in Listening. This opened the possiblity of two implications for the new exam. Firstly that if unfair grading was carried over to the new GCSE, it would look ridiculous that pupils were being given low grades for very high raw scores. In the event, I think the actual exam papers were not as easy as the SAMs.

Secondly, the accessible SAMs could have led to more pupils being entered for Higher Tier. And in the event, it is the case that more pupils were entered for Higher papers this year. This could have meant an embarrassing number of pupils dropping to a U if they were incorrectly entered for Higher Tier when the actual papers weren't as accessible as the SAMs. What we see in fact, is fewer grade 5s allocated this year and an increase in 6s, presumably as a result of some schools entering more pupils for Higher Tier. And only a very small increase in Us.

So a potentially embarrasing situation was avoided, without compromising Ofqual's intention of maintaining parity with previous years at the key grades of Grade 4 and Grade 7. It will be interesting to find out as more information becomes available, exactly how this was negotiated.

The important questions are whether this goes far enough to bring MFL grading into line with other subjects. And whether it will be sustained. There is the famous "sawtooth" mechanism whereby when a new specification is introduced, grading becomes gradually harsher as teachers gain expertise in the new course and the new exam. Is this year's grading a step in the right direction? Or just a one-off to ease in the new exam?

Unfair grading has a huge impact on the narrative of national "failure" in language learning. Any steps to address it would be hugely welcome, and could be transformative alongside very necessary changes post-16. Let's hope this is a first step in the right direction!

Update following the ALL webinar. There is no movement towards ending severe grading. The allocation of grades at 4+ and 7+ was always going to be maintained. There are shifts in French with more 3s and more 6s. This is arithmetically determined rather than deliberate adjustment. It may be explained by changes to the profile of the pupils taking French as numbers drop. Or the higher numbers entered for Higher tier. Languages remains graded nigh on a grade lower than other ebacc subjects in the range 4 to 7. In fact it is the 50th anniversary of Nuttall's research confirming severe grading at O Level.

Challenging the System Part 6: Next Steps...

 In a previous post, I offered a vision of what a functioning languages ecosystem in the English state sector could look like. With a positive experience of languages in Primary and Secondary School, and with mainstream pathways post-16 and beyond. A contrast with the stark reality of the current situation, where you could hardly design a worse system for teaching and learning languages.

The question is, what practical steps can we take to move away from where we are now. And this is really serious. We are facing a crisis where the impending lack of language teachers will only be managed by reductions to incentives for schools to teach languages, leading to total collapse of the system. This excellent article by Juliette Claro (click the link) shows the unsustainable situation.

What steps can we take?

Fortunately there is one cost-free and immediate step that will have a huge impact. GCSE grading. At the stroke of a pen, we can eliminate the unfair disincentive for pupils to take languages. There is no reason for it to be on average a whole grade harder to get a good grade in languages. It is simply a historical anomaly that we have got stuck with. Ofqual's brief is to maintain the "value" of grades in languages year on year, not to compare it to grades in other subjects. In most subjects, if an exam is too hard one year, they use grade boundaries to bring grades into line. Or if an exam is too easy, then they use the grade boundaries to bring it into line. Except for languages, where grade boundaries are used every year to keep grades out of line with other subjects. 

The only people who supposedly would suffer from ending this would be pupils in previous years whose grade in languages would look bad compared to pupils going forward. This argument is bogus. In fact, it would be an overdue recognition for all those pupils over the years, that their languages grade that looked lower than their other subjects was not in fact any reflection on them. Just a reflection of how grades were allocated in different subjects.

And of course schools are sensitive to these figures. The government has taken to using school performance measures such as the ebacc and changes to Progress 8 to encourage schools to promote certain subjects. Ending unfair grading would feed into this system of controlling what subjects are valued and incentivised in school.

It would help address the narrative of "failure" that we see in the national press when it comes to languages. And the culture wars which distort language teaching initiatives, driven by the perceived "failure" to recruit pupils to an unfairly graded subject. The reputation for "difficulty" of languages GCSE isn't based on the content of the course or of the exams. It's an artificial outcome of the decision to grade languages unfairly compared to other subjects.

And if anyone tries to tell you that it's because of the quality of teaching, you can tell them that that calibration has not been made. At no point did they make that assessment and apply it to how grades should be set. And if they tell you it's because it's hard to recruit language teachers so there must be an impact on teaching quality, you can ask them why that doesn't apply to maths. No-one is going around suggesting maths grading should be made harsher. And if languages grades were in line with other subjects, no-one would be clamouring for them to be made harsher either. Going back through the history of grading, it's been like that since the 1970s and we've just got stuck with it.

It would end the blight on the careers of language teachers, tired out by the moral bankrupcy of having to hide the truth of the grading from pupils, and scorned as a blot on the school's results in performance tables.

It's free, it's transformative, it's easy. To maintain the unfair grading would be perverse.

Another area currently under review is Primary language teaching. The CAR review seems to have gone with the "substantial progress in one language" model and to want to tackle transition from KS2 to KS3 head-on. Their ambition is for KS2-KS3 to see uninterrupted progression.

This is a hugely ambitious demand. I think that whatever demands the government makes of schools, the teachers will perform miracles towards making them work. Despite the system (in the case of languages) working against them.

What is happening here, is the government doubling down on the demands. While doing nothing to solve the systemic issues. We need to have as our starting point that transition from KS2 to KS3 will be disruptive. 

Pupils will go into classes in Year 7 where there will be pupils who are continuing with the same language, and other pupils who previously studied a different language. All at different levels. Primary school recruitment is not built around who can teach the language taught at one or other of the local Secondary schools. Secondary school timetables are not built around what languages different pupils studied in Primary school.

Recognising that there is a hiatus here is not necessarily a bad thing. What it means is that Primary languages needs to be valued on its own merits. Not just seen as a preparation for Secondary school. We can stress the lived experience of meeting new languages, rather than some imposed concept of "progression". Pupils' immediate initial focus is on learning to say and understand things, rather than on grammar. By exploring other languages, they inevitably make discoveries about the nature of language including learning that English isn't the natural innate and default language of thought and communication, and that other languages work differently. They can learn through rhyme, song, stories, routines, games and cultural aspects, seeing how languages and cultures are part of the world they are growing up in.

This approach isn't inimical to the idea of progression in a language. But it puts the starting point perhaps more comfortably in a style of learning more suitable to the age group and the confidence of teachers in their own language ability. It's absolutely vital that the voices of Primary teachers are heard here. They are the ones making this work, and finding what works is fundamental to what we should be developing. And of course, when we remove unfair grading at GCSE, we will see more recruits into Primary teaching who have a GCSE in a language.

Recruiting teachers is the key to the impending crisis in languages teaching. Currently we depend on non specialists in Primary and increasingly in Secondary, alongside immigration to boost numbers. Without changes to the system, these are only temporary emergency sticking plasters. So what else can we do to make things work?

The answer is NOT to try to get more people to study A Level Languages or do Philology degrees at University. 

I am not unsympathetic to the demise of Language degrees for the tiny minority who want specialist academic study of the language through linguistics and through literary and other texts and its socio-historical context with essays (in English) and translation. Indeed, if we can solve the systemic issues, then there may be a wider pool of takers for such courses. 

But these are not mainstream language learning pathways. And the idea that language learning is only valid if it has the added intellectual heft of essays, literature, grammar, linguistics is dangerously inimical to language learning in this country. It means as well as being harshly graded at GCSE, languages is a dead-end subject. With no suitable pathways post 16 for the vast majority of pupils. Even if we somehow doubled the number of people taking languages A Level, it would still be all but irrelevant. And who are these people for whom it would be suitable? A Level languages feels like a fraud perpetrated on the few students who do take it, with the workload and harsh grading driving most into disillusion despite their love of the subject and the huge progress they make. In my school, we are into the last cohort to take A Level languages, and it will be a huge relief not to feel guilty for letting keen bright students commit themselves to something they will regret.

So what is the alternative? How do we have a post-16 offer which means pupils can enjoy continuing with a language that they studied at GCSE (in greater numbers once unfair grading is removed), or start a new language or multiple languages? One answer is staring us in the face. Because it's already vastly more popular than A Level: online apps and AI. British young people who supposedly don't study languages, are avid users of Duolingo.

Is it OK for sixth forms and colleges to abdicate responsibility for language learning to an app? I am uneasy about this. But could we or should we be trying to replicate this within the education system? The aim would be for students to study the range of languages they want at the level and pace that suits them. Just as at Primary school, rather than focusing on "progress", we should be looking at experience and attitudes. And with a large number studying online, more formal learning may perhaps follow?

Could colleges do more to incentivise this? To create the expectation that learning a language independently is something to be shared, documented and accredited. Even if they can't themselves offer lessons on demand in Korean or Japanese. And Universities. It must be possible for Universities to send a stronger message to applicants: When you come to university, you are stepping into an international community with international horizons, and we will take an interest in evidence of language learning you have done. And when you come to university, you will have the possibility, whatever your subject, of studying abroad. And alongside your degree subject, you can study a language either as part of your degree or as an add on.

And this should be huge: Erasmus.

When we took pupils on the Spanish exchange, our kids were always stunned at how the Spanish kids saw this as part of a strategic plan. The exchange in Year 10. Spending a year across the border as a boarder in a French lycée. Doing an Erasmus year in England. And a masters in the States. All planned out from age 14.

How do we inspire this ambition in our pupils?

Erasmus+ has to be a huge part of this. In Primary and Secondary it funds teachers and pupils to collaborate and travel internationally. We need to make all the things we say in the blurb on our Programmes of Study actually come true. Languages needs to be a normal thing in a world where we work with people around the globe. In person and virtually. We need to convince our Year 9 pupils so that they arrive at university demanding that they can study abroad for a year, whether they do History or Engineering or Architecture or Maths. We have to create this expectation, because otherwise University departments won't bother. Last time we were in Erasmus, although students from other countries and all disciplines came to study here, the majority of British young people who went abroad were studying languages. So limited to a tiny minority.

And then we will have cracked it. We will have enough people who have continued with a language post 16, many of whom will have lived and studied abroad for a year. They may not have written essays on Fray Luis de León or André Gide. But they will have the confidence they can pass on to young people the real-world benefits of learning a language.

Nothing pie in the sky. Easy changes to the system and its demands and incentives. Then you can let teachers and learners get on with the job. I promise you they won't let you down.

Challenging the System. Part 5. The Vocabulary (and Grammar) Curriculum: A Failed Experiment

 Actually, that title is unfair. In science an experiment is never a failure. If you discover something doesn't work, then you have learned something. Unless you fail to learn, in which case, yes, it's a failed experiment.

There are three main reasons why it failed. One because of teaching. Two, because of learning. And thirdly because of politics.

In terms of teaching, it seems like a great idea to have a curriculum where pupils learn and are tested on a defined body of language. A curriculum where they meet the words repeatedly at carefully planned and tracked intervals in different contexts so just as words were about to be forgotten, they are reinforced. And knowledge accumulates.

But in practice, it's impossible for the classroom teacher to construct that meticulous fine tuned instrument. I do not have the wherewithal (is that really one word?!) to create such a thing. What I can create is a core snowball of pupils' language where their repertoire rolls from one unit to another and picks up more and more language once it has something to stick to. For me, the vocabulary list approach means trying to create an even covering of language. And an even covering will melt much quicker than a snowball. The incredibly perfect layering required to make an even covering that will survive, is beyond me to resource and teach. We need something much more robust, without fear of some of the things we teach melting, and something which won't fall apart in the real world of the classroom.

In fact, I can't even write single texts based on this approach, let alone a whole curriculum. Because when I sit down to create a text for a resource, I don't know what words are or are not on the list. Or what words are due for a fresh encounter. I write the text using the words that the piece of writing needs. But how to write a text about Marie Curie if we don't have the words Polish or chemistry? Of course I can gloss them. But that's not the idea of what we are supposed to be doing. It's what we've ended up doing, especially when pupils are asked questions such as "What do you like to do in your free time?" or "What do you like to eat when you go to a restaurant?" Because they can't all say "rabbit". So we have made the vocabulary approach work. By ignoring it. And teaching the words pupils need.

That's from the teaching point of view. And already that last point is moving into the learner's point of view. But it's not just about having to teach vocabulary that's not on the list. It's about the whole perversion of language learning. Language is not about making sentences for the sake of practising prescribed words. Language learning is about saying things you want to say. Fortunately our learners always, even when you try to make them create sentences from a predetermined list, always try to say things you weren't expecting. But most importantly, learning that way doesn't actually work.

I have an example in this post where pupils who had written some practice sentences in Year 10, when it came to Year 11 were basically starting from scratch. The pupil who had written a true story remembered it clearly. Not word by word. But he could retell the story fluently a year later. There are two sides to this. Firstly it made the language memorable when he wrote it, because he was deploying his full knowledge of how the language worked, challenging himself to articulate bits of knowledge into a something that made sense. Secondly, it was memorable when he was rewriting it a year later. Because it had personal meaning. You can see from the original post that the two versions a year apart are quite different. I am not talking about memorisation here. I am talking about consolidated language learning that has long lasting impact on his ability to deploy his knowledge to express himself. In a way that the pupils who had just done some sentences to practise the Spanish could not keep up with. Meaning matters. We have to start with meaning, not with a list of words to practise until they are memorised.

This language learning focused argument is of course the most powerful argument. But there is also a political side. Because the "learn the prescribed content and be graded on it" approach is part of the right wing perversion of the knowledge curriculum idea. It sees learning as accurate recall of important knowledge, in order to meet the demands of the gatekeepers. It denies pupils agency, creativity, expression. You can see this is a philosophical rephrasing of the very real issues outlined above in the sections on Teaching and on Learning. And you can see the political assumptions it is based on.

So...

Imagine if we are given a list of words to be learned at KS3. And this is then policed for conformity as to whether pupils know those words. What would happen to our carefully constructed and robust schemes of work and resources then? What would happen to the careful balance of communication and grammatical progression? Can you imagine having to throw out everything that works? And "deliver" something that has already failed? It would be heartbreaking and I think I would have to leave teaching.

This could only come to happen because of the narrative of "failure". Severe grading and other systemic failures are perfectly designed to make continuing with language learning impossible for all but a tiny minority. We need to challenge these systemic failures, and challenge the narrative that something is "wrong" with teaching. With the utmost urgency and forthrightness. Before they make things even worse.

Challenging the System Part 4: Are we ripe for AI to take over in language teaching?

 Here's a scary thought. Is MFL teaching in exactly the sort of place where AI could take over and do the job instead of us?

Firstly there's the nature of language learning. One view has it that language learning consists of meeting words and vocabulary in different contexts in a meticulously constructed and tracked series of encounters with words being met and recalled at intervals. AI can generate sentences to practise this and could supposedly track success and failure in recalling words.

Then there's the systemic failures of languages in the English system:

A Primary sector under resourced to meet the vision of pupils in this age group learning languages through listening and joining in with routines, games, songs, stories and cross curricular opportunities. A secondary sector being pushed towards grammar and vocabulary. Unfair grading and the subsequent narrative that there must be something wrong with language teaching. A sixth form offering that does not meet the demands of learners, with more young people using Duolingo than taking the niche academic A Level. Universties where the tragic demise of philology degrees risks dragging down with it the provision of non specialist language learning centres for students of all disciplines.

I don't think we would set out to replace Primary teaching of languages with AI. But it may happen by the back door. Teachers who may feel ill-equipped to teach a language, may readily turn to AI for planning, resources, and even as an interactive teaching tool. They may welcome a source of content which is readily accessible and solves problems of resources and confidence in the language. They may feel that given the circumstances, AI enables them to do better. In teacher tapp surveys, when teachers are asked what aspect of the curriculum they would rather leave to someone else, Languages often tops the vote. If a safe AI interface came along, that pupils could engage with directly, it might feel like a step forward.

Likewise at secondary, where there are staffing issues, AI could present a solution. And elsewhere it could be pushed as a tool for pupils to be more independent in their learning and for learning to be more personalised. Two buzz words that are easy for policy makers to eagerly pick up on.

Post-16 where schools and colleges have no mainstream language learning pathways, AI can solve the problem of the need for individualised language learning at different levels and in a range of different languages for different learners. Some may have a GCSE in a language, some may not. Some may want to continue with the same language, some may want to start a new one. It's unlikely that sixth forms could provide individualised teaching of a range of languages. But Duolingo already does. And AI could...

Is this desirable? The deficiencies of our system could be mitigated by use of AI. Were it to one day be reliable and safe.

There are two dangers here. One is that in the face of a defective system, this does nothing to do what needs doing. What needs to be done is to deal with the systemic failure. Underfunding at Primary, unfair grading at GCSE, lack of mainstream language learning post-16. AI might help with some of these disasters. But it would be much better to tackle the real problems in the system.

Secondly, it may offer the hope of improving on what can be done in a broken system. But it doesn't come close to what could be done in a working system.

Language learning has to be more than gameified recall of vocabulary and grammar. Or interacting with a machine. Points, levels, streaks... these are all aspects of addiction to screens that we see bringing a deterioration of young people's lives. They are no replacement for what should be the positives of language learning. At Primary, AI would take us away from the magic of pupils using language in songs, games, stories, creativity, routines, daily life. It would take us away from ownership of language and identity as a language learner. It would take us away from communication.

As language teachers, we can respond to AI with all the things we do best. International and intercultural communication, self expression and imagination. The things stopping us are built into the system. And AI would do nothing to remove those obstacles. We need to challenge the system and change the narrative before someone proposes AI as the wrong answer to the wrong problem.

AI will kill your children and abandon their Granny. Don't use it.

 The worst thing AI has done for me is this:

I was testing its problem solving skills by asking it how to cut a cheesecake into 5 equal pieces. It has given me many absurd answers even including cutting the cheesecake horizontally and then reassembling portions of crust and cream. As everyone knows, the correct answer is to cut it into 6 and make the extra slice disappear before serving the 5 perfectly equal slices. On this occasion it was giving me a spurious method based on the Golden Ratio. I was laughing at this when I noticed the diagram it was giving me to illustrate its method. A guide to the different forms of Female Genital Mutilation. How it had bundled FGM in with How to Cut Cheesecake as if it were instructions isn't a joke. It's abhorrent.

Does this mean that we shouldn't use AI? Well everyone knows not to use it for "factual" information. Because it just makes things up:

You can have fun with variations of this question, inserting your own choice of minor celebrity. What it reveals is how it's never really answering YOUR question. It's trotting out a concocted text that your question may or may not be relevant to. In this case it can answer the chicken and the egg paradox. But not with the addition of a world class athlete. Common questions with an easy answer you already know are more likely to be answered correctly. But why would you be asking for answers you already know?

The same applies to problem solving. AI is NOT thinking about your problem. It is not analysing your situation. It is writing something plausible that sounds as if it might make a good answer.

I tried it with a few scenarios.

I hit refresh on this many times or tried clearer prompts. Each time it gave me a different answer. Its times made no sense. It didn't get me to the beach on time. And it failed to spot that I had frozen items that I needed to get in the freezer.

It can't deal with the simple logistics of getting to the beach on time. Let alone pick up on issues that ought to be dealt with. Are we really suggesting it would be a good idea to delegate planning and decisions to AI? It is NOT making decisions or analysing the situation. It is just cobbling together some words.

It can't do the maths. Can it respond to a simple decision that doesn't involve calculations?

It variously suggested knocking on the door to wake my neighbours up to tell them I was going to be cutting the grass, or practising my drums first...

All very amusing. But how far will its cheerfully delivered bad advice go?

Here it is failing to respond to very young kids being left in a hot car.

I tried this one with mistral chat, Gemini, chatgpt, copilot and perplexity. All showed different degrees of mock horror or glib answers about the ice-cream or the upholstery of the car. Several commented about the kids making a mess. They all gave varying estimates of the temperature from 40° to 60°. None suggested I should check on the kids.

Here it is showing similar disregard for my very elderly mother in law.

It can't process the simple maths of logistics problems and it can't grasp the human dimension of a situation. Because it's not actually doing any analysis or solving. It's just doing words.

So maybe if we don't use it for decision making, we could perhaps use it for drafting?

Like this you mean?

It has no clue.

Why are my experiences with AI so consistently bad? Because I am trapping it into mistakes by asking it things that are a little bit complicated or unexpected. OK then. Use it for highly predictable easy things that you already know the answer to. But what is the point of that? And also think what these experiments are really showing: It does not have the intelligence to think about and solve your problem. All it has is the power to put words together to fob you off. If that's what you want and need in your life and your business, then go ahead and use it!

Challenging the System Part 3: Transition from KS2 to KS3

 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 Sisyphean 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.