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Language College
Language College
What KLB School has achieved as a Language College
A summary of the range of languages activities at KLB School. (Updated October 2010)
- All pupils take at least one language at Key Stage 4, and most of these (85%) take GCSE - this in the context of rapidly declining take up of Languages at Key Stage 4. Nationally, fewer than 50% of pupils are taking a language at Key Stage 4 in over 50% of schools. In the highest achieving 20% of schools, only 60% offer languages as a compulsory subject.
- Around 15% take two languages to GCSE - again, significant in the above context.
- Pupils are offered a particularly wide range of languages.
- The Oriental languages are particularly strong in this school. For Japanese there are over 40 pupils in each of Years 7 to 10, 20 in Year 11, 8 taking AS in Y12 and 3 taking A2 in Y13.
- For Chinese, we have classes in every year group apart from Y13 this year.
- A level courses run in French, German, Spanish Chinese and Japanese.
- The most able pupils generally achieve very high grades in the Languages. The relatively good take up at A level means that many of our pupils who will move into Business and Commerce are particularly well equipped to operate in the global economy.
- We have a particularly successful and extensive range of exchanges. The national context for this is that fewer and fewer schools run exchanges and those that do are struggling to maintain them. Our problem seems to be oversubscription! We have exchanges to France, Germany, Spain and Japan. We also have a 'one-way' exchange with China.
- In addition to the above, we also have work experience placements in Year 12 in Germany, France and Spain.
- We work with 12 local primary schools in Years 3 to 6. The main languages offered are French, German and Japanese. We offer between 1 and 2 hours per week in each of our partner primary schools for the whole academic year. Our primary provision is far greater than any of the other Language Colleges in Gloucestershire and we are seen as the lead school in the county for this work.
- Our main partner secondary school for languages is Sir William Romney's School in Tetbury. Our support includes offering Japanese. We are also developing a strategy to support their work to enable their feeder primary schools to deliver the Key Stage 2 Languages Strategy.
- We run adult education classes in French. We currently have 20 members of the local community enrolled .
- Our online interactive language resources are used by a large number of UK schools. A Google search for information on subjects such as GCSE Japanese consistently has KLB School resources on the first page of the search results. These interactive resources have had visitors from over 50 countries since they were set up in 2000.
Katharine Lady Berkeley's School, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, GL12 8RB