Policy Language

What is the Campaign?   Speak to the Future is a new campaign with the support of over 30 organisations to address the UK’s flagging achievement in language learning. The campaign calls for urgent action on policy to safeguard and revitalise language learning across all phases of education in order to boost educational and career opportunities for young people and the UK’s ability to compete in the global economy. Campaigners have united to send a powerful public message highlighting the vital national importance of foreign language capacity in today’s global world.  The Speak to the future campaign is supported by the British Academy, the Chartered Institute of Linguists and a range of other organisations.

Want to know how Mandarin has evolved from first practice to next practice?  What will future Mandarin practice look like?

Why not look at Dr Jill Shepherd’s (The Chinese Staffroom) presentation that she gave at Brighton College Chinese Conference below.   The matrix/table from the group exercise can be downloaded at the bottom of this page as a Word file.

Have you read, thought about and acted upon the latest Ofsted  (England's Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) report on language teaching published this year, to think through the implications for teaching Chinese in primary and secondary schools? Even if you do not teach in England it might be worth reading to prompt you to wonder about how to improve your own teaching

New Line Learning Academy  are developing the next generation of school teaching Chinese in the UK- The Tiger Primary School.

- It co-teaches Mandarin and English from young?

- Integrates elements of Chinese approach to numeracy and music

- Allows for good transition into KS3 and KS4 Chinese at the academies New Line Learning and Cornwalls

- Makes the most of the schools Chinese teaching faculty available in the other academies and through HanBan funding?

The SSAT held a prestigious 2nd Annual Chinese lecture on the 1st March at the Barbican. The speaker was the Secretary of State for Education, Rt Hon Michael Gove MP. The Chinese Staffroom identified 3 key themes, each of which are reported below along with informative relevant links:

Interested in national language policy?

This short video from the Asia Society highlights the case for United States to improved foreign language and cultural understanding capacity.   Parallels to be drawn with the UK perhaps?