[EDLING:44] EducationGuardian.co.uk: Changing their tune

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Changing their tune
School is all about teaching to the tests these days - or is it? Our exclusive survey of heads shows many are bringing back languages and music. Jessica Shepherd reports
Jessica Shepherd
Tuesday April 17 2007
The Guardian


The last time there was an attempt to make foreign languages compulsory in primary schools was in 1963. It went down as well as a Brit on holiday in France who speaks only English. The latest attempt is a different story altogether.

Earlier this year, the government announced that a modern foreign language would be a compulsory part of the national curriculum for seven- to 14-year-olds from 2010.

A survey of UK headteachers carried out by Education Guardian and educational consultants EdComs, and administered by ICM, shows that 66% of primary and middle school heads in England say they have already put this into practice. Another 18% plan to do so by September 2010.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 59% of primary school heads say they already have modern foreign language slots in their timetables. Some 989 headteachers replied to the Headspace survey, of whom 776 were from primary or junior state schools.

The survey also reveals that 28% of all English primary school heads have increased the budget for music lessons in the past three years.

Carole Whitty, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, says the survey's results show just how eager headteachers are to provide their pupils with a wider range of subjects than those that are crammed for Sats in year 6.

The former head of Eggbuckland community college in Plymouth says: "These results show teachers and school leaders care deeply about what pupils need to know and are concerned that the current focus on tests has narrowed the curriculum right down and pushed out the space for language learning and music, for example.

"Scratch the surface of any school leader and you will find really deep passion to improve the skills of their learners. There hasn't been sufficient freedom for them to really explore this. School leaders have seized on singing and modern languages, as this survey shows. School heads are seriously frustrated by teaching to tests. I think that frustration with the curriculum is growing."

The lack of flexibility, particularly in the final years of primary school, irritates many headteachers. "The vast majority of the last year is focused on Sats, and increasingly the years leading up to year 6 are also focused on Sats," Whitty says. "This survey's results show a desperation to ensure balance for primary pupils. Teachers clearly would like to develop a range of skills in their pupils, as well as numeracy and literacy. Give a lot of headteachers the chance and they would love the freedom to take children out on trips, for example. Huge numbers of headteachers believe that school should be a time when you develop a range of skills."

Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, agrees that schools and colleges have seen the latest modern foreign language initiative and "picked it up and run with it".

"We are becoming more aware that we need to do something about foreign languages at an early age," he says. "Clearly, school leaders agree with the government that this is the thing to do. This time the idea really seems to have been taken up. What motivates leaders of schools and colleges is a desire to do well by their students, and these initiatives are seen as beneficial to students. More people travel now and can see just how useful a modern foreign language is."

Maureen Perry has just retired as a headteacher of St Mary and St Benedict Catholic primary school in Coventry, where she encouraged pupils to call the register in different languages. She did not take part in the Headspace survey, but can see why many of those primary heads who did have shown an enthusiasm for modern foreign languages in the primary curriculum.

"I think people have been aware of the need to do something about foreign language teaching in primary schools, but it hasn't been cast down in tablets of stone," she says. "It's been more ad hoc until now. The push from government has helped."

But timetabling a modern foreign language into the curriculum is not without its problems. Headteachers told the survey that they worried about the supply of language teachers and whether there were enough funds to pay them. Some 37% of English primary and middle school headteachers were concerned about how they would train their staff to deliver foreign language lessons, and a quarter worried about how they would recruit such teachers.

It was Lord Dearing, in his review of school languages policy published earlier this year, who recommended modern foreign languages be put on the primary school timetable. He said primary and secondary schools needed an extra £50m a year to deliver the new curriculum. But 18% of heads in the survey questioned whether government funds for language lessons would be enough.

Ward says: "It is not surprising that primary heads are worried about where they are going to fund the staff for modern foreign language provision. I'm not surprised, either, that they think it is difficult to recruit the right staff. In small primary schools, teachers have to cover every specialism. Are they going to be able to find someone who speaks a foreign language?"

Elsewhere in the survey, headteachers show another change in attitude - this time towards extended schools. Under the new Every Child Matters government welfare reforms, primary and secondary schools are encouraged to offer extended services outside normal school hours, as well as sports, homework and arts clubs after or before school to help working parents.

Some 72% of primary and secondary heads plan to have, or already have, an extended school. This is in sharp contrast to a Headspace survey from January last year, when 37% of heads said they were opposed to longer opening hours.

Perhaps headteachers are now more drawn to the idea because they no longer fear their hours will extend to evening and weekend working. Extended schools can, it seems, be anything from a one-stop shop for the local community with a health centre to a simple after-school club.

"What we are defining as an extended school is much less than the full-blooded version of a school with social and health services attached that was discussed 18 months ago," says Ward. "What we are actually seeing is schools that open their facilities to the local community."

But Marsha Elms, headteacher of Kendrick school and Reading girls' school, who did not take part in the survey, has a more cynical explanation for why heads' opinion of extended schools has changed. "When you put a bid in to be a specialist school, it helps if you are an extended school," she says.

And Jeffrey Threlfall, headteacher at Wildern school in Hampshire, says his school has made a "significant income" from being an extended school. Threlfall has opened up the leisure centre, lecture theatre and cinema on the school site to the local community. But he urges caution.

"The quality of teaching and learning must always be central to the school, not the potential for making money from opening up facilities," he says. "Also, if a school is fighting to sort out issues of behaviour, staffing, teaching and learning, the last thing you need to be distracted by as a headteacher is adult education or whether you have a health centre on site. Another problem is that schools that are successful and could be excellent extended schools are often heavily oversubscribed and don't have much space."

Moreover, at the NASUWT teachers' union conference last week, Stuart Merry, a headteacher from Kirklees near Huddersfield, warned that extended schools would deprive children of contact with their parents because they would stay at school for longer.

"Some people will see this as just another way of dropping off children so they can get on with their busy lives," he said. "I don't like that at all and I don't think schools should be in the business of encouraging that."

The Headspace survey also reveals that 23% of primary school headteachers in the UK believe that half of their year 6 intake do not have the necessary skills to be able to cope with the key stage 3 curriculum when they start secondary school.

Yet Perry disagrees: "If anything, we prepare primary pupils too well. Some are bored at the beginning of secondary school. It's perhaps a caution that the tests are encroaching on the rest of the curriculum. I would say that a secondary school is not ready for the primary school children, not the other way around."

And Threlfall insists: "I think the transition between primary and secondary has got easier."

Headteachers will clearly not agree on everything. But with such a consensus on modern languages and extended schools, it seems, on the whole, headteachers are speaking the same language.

Languages in numbers

66% of English primary and middle-school heads have introduced a modern foreign language into the curriculum

37% of English primary and middle-school heads are worried about the supply of language teachers

72% of primary and secondary headteachers in the UK plan to have or already have an extended school

28% of English primary heads have increased their music budget in the past three years

25% of UK primary heads think only half their year 6 pupils will have key stage 3 skills when they leave their school

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