Wednesday Academy is sharing three French language assistants with other schools in the Matrix Academy Trust. In this interview, we hear from the headteacher, head of languages, language assistant and the pupils themselves about the impact hosting a language assistant has on the pupils
My name is Joe Phillips and I'm a head teacher here at Wednesfield Academy.
Wednesfield Academy, part of the Matrix Academy Trust, is a hugely diverse school with pupils from a range of different backgrounds. We also have a range of pupils in terms of their economic background, 45% of our pupils are in receipt of pupil premium.
We've got three fantastic modern language assistants: Lou, Anne Charlotte and Laurie. We wanted to employ them because we really are passionate about exposing the pupils in this school to different cultures as well as building up their language skills. We want our pupils to be outward thinking.
Three of the key impacts that the modern foreign language assistants have had in our school are:
- raising the results of the pupils. We've seen a really, really positive increase in the grades achieved by our pupils at GCSE but also at Key Stage 3.
- they have a big impact on educating our pupils about culture from abroad and making sure that they are very outward thinking.
- the last one and possibly the most important is that our pupils now feel more confident in speaking a foreign language. We've taken a number of trips abroad now to France and the impact of having foreign language assistants is clear to see.
Our pupils are really keen to have the foreign language assistants help them in their lessons but, as part of the wider school community, they speak really highly of the impact that they've had on their French learning and also the interactions that they've had with them outside of the classroom.
Our parents have written in a number of times and also said to us verbally how pleased they are that the pupils have this support for French, which can be a very difficult subject to learn.
They can support the teacher in the classroom, particularly focusing on those pupils who might be struggling and giving them that more individual support. It also really helps if there is a non-specialist teaching French that there is the foreign language assistant within the classroom to really be able to help the pupils with the precise vocabulary and pronunciation.
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My name's Felicity Callanan. I work as part of the school improvement team for Matrix Academy Trust. I've been teaching French and Spanish for 13 years. I now look after languages and international opportunities across our trust.
One of the key factors for us is that the language assistants are a bridge between the teacher and the students. They are normally university students or just out of university. They bring a sense of youth culture. They know about things that we don't and the pupils really value hearing about what kind of music the MLA likes, what kind of things they do in their day-to-day life, what they study at school. Our pupils are always fascinated that they don't wear uniforms in France!
We had a French assistant last year who wore hijab and the pupils were really interested to learn about the differences between French culture and UK culture, particularly our pupils that wear religious symbols as part of their uniform.
Our pupils are keen to go and talk to the language assistant. They are not keen to speak French to me as the teacher but they absolutely love going out and working in small groups with the MLA. They see that as a treat, as a privilege but it really builds their confidence in terms of their speaking. And we've noticed a huge increase in the accuracy of their pronunciation, particularly with their tenses when it comes to their speaking exams. Our pupils really enjoy learning more about the culture and talking to someone who has actually lived French. As an English speaker myself, having the MLA there to provide some of the cultural knowledge that I don't know is really valuable.
I practise my French all the time. I quite frequently turn and I'm like, ‘Comment on dit …’ And I know that Lou or Laurie will always be there to help me out. They often proofread our resources for us to double check the accuracy of the French. We know that we make typos. We know that English people still forget adjectival agreement even after 20 years of learning French. So it's really helpful to have the MLAs there to support us in making sure our knowledge is correct.
We know that we really struggle to recruit foreign language teachers and that there's a national shortage at the moment. So we have a development route for our MLAs to train to teach with us should they wish to do that at the end of their assistantship which has been a really positive programme for our pupils and hopefully for our staff as well.
The best bit about having a language assistant is watching the pupils grow and feel confident and volunteering to go out and speak French. They never ever volunteer to speak French in lesson but suddenly as soon as they've got the option, they are absolutely delighted to go and speak to the MLA. Hearing them during pupil voice, talking about how much they feel they've progressed and become more confident in their speaking through working with the MLA is really, really valuable and I think that's one of the best bits.
