Shawlands Academy cooked up a winning entry at a recent competition for schools in Glasgow aimed at getting pupils actively learning about employability and enterprise skills through the use of modern languages.

The Glasgow International Job Centre competition set pupils aged 14 from eleven secondary schools the task of investigating and gathering all the information needed to recruit someone for a job in another country - a task made more difficult by the fact they had to do all of it in the language of their chosen country.

Pupils then presented their projects to a panel of judges at the Palace of Art in Glasgow. Shawlands Academy took first place narrowly beating St Margaret Mary’s Secondary School with Bellahouston Academy in third palce.

The judges, who included Brian Templeton from the University of Glasgow’s Faculty of Education, Alexis Grant, Employability and Enterprise Officer at Glasgow City Council, and Sarah Montgomery from British Council Scotland, chose Shawlands for an imaginative and confident presentation which included all members of the team and for involving the local community in their project.

Their prize-winning recipe included the innovative approach of inviting a local chef to come into their classroom and talk about his experience of working in a restaurant, as well as speaking to local careers and enterprise experts.

The enterprising pupils conducted the full recruitment process in Urdu including writing a job description, advertising the job in their school and

encouraging fellow pupils to apply. They then short-listed applicants and videoed those chosen for interview.

As part of their winning presentation they played the judges a short video of the successful applicant’s recruitment interview in Urdu. They then showed the end result – a ‘chef’ dressed in whites and a plate of freshly-made pakora – as evidence of their successful recruitment to the post!

The school was supported in the project by their British Council Language Assistant, Dawood Ahmad from Pakistan, who is spending nine months in Glasgow helping teach pupils about his country’s language and culture.

Dawood Ahmad said: ‘All these activities were made relevant to their class work and writing skills in Urdu. They really loved every moment of the work and at every stage of the project their curiosity increased.’

One pupil said: ‘I really enjoyed this project because we worked as a whole class, I am much more confident in what I am doing. I have learnt more Urdu vocabulary than I probably ever knew.’

Shawlands' Urdu teacher Shafqat Rafiq, remarked: 'The pupils have developed interpersonal and presentation skills. The class environment has become very positive, with pupils sharing ideas and working together to improve. They learned a lot about employability, different skills and themselves.'

The Glasgow International Job Centre competition was organised jointly by Glasgow City Council’s Enterprise Education Officer, Sandra Prior, and Determined to Succeed, which helps to prepare young people for the world of work and beyond.

For more information on Foreign Language Assistants, please email, eduardo.lees@britishcouncil.org or Telephone +44 (0) 131 524 5717 or visit our web site.