Setting

20 September 2006 Ms C Ball Headteacher Corvedale C of E Primary School Diddlebury Craven Arms Shropshire SY7 9DH

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Ofsted survey inspection programme – Modern languages

Thank you for your hospitality and co-operation, and that of your staff and pupils, during my visit on 18 September to look at work in modern languages.

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Ofsted survey inspection programme – Modern languages

As outlined in my initial letter, as well as looking at key areas of the subject, the visit had a particular focus on implementing languages entitlement.

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Ofsted survey inspection programme – Modern languages

The visit provided valuable information which will contribute to our national evaluation and reporting. Published reports are likely to list the names of the contributing institutions, but individual institutions will not be identified in the main text. All feedback letters will be published on the Ofsted website at the end of each half-term.

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Ofsted survey inspection programme – Modern languages

The evidence used to inform the judgements made included: interviews with staff and pupils, scrutiny of relevant documentation, analysis of pupils’ work and observation of two lessons.

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Ofsted survey inspection programme – Modern languages

The overall effectiveness of modern languages (ML) was judged to be satisfactory.

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Achievement and standards

 All pupils in the school study French and all groups are making satisfactory progress.  Pupils have been learning French for two terms and are working around level 2 in speaking and listening. They speak French well and their pronunciation is good when they are working from memory but it is less good when they are reading aloud because they do not know how to make the sounds represented by groups of letters. Alexandra House 33 Kingsway London WC2B 6SE T 08456 404045 F 020 7421 6644 www.ofsted.gov.uk  Their writing is less well developed because it is not as well taught. They are beginning to understand how the language works but are less sure about strategies to remember rules.

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Quality of teaching and learning of subject

 Speaking and listening are well taught and the teacher engages the pupils by allowing them to participate in fun activities, such as dressing up in silly clothes when practising items of clothing. There are times, however, when pupils are expected to listen to the teacher for too long and they become restless.  The class teachers are involved in planning the lessons and have already built well on developing pupils’ understanding of different cultures.  The teaching of reading and writing are less well developed and pupils are sometimes expected to read and write in French with insufficient help.  ICT is rarely used to support language learning. So far there is little assessment of pupils’ progress so they do not know what they have to do to improve.

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Quality of curriculum

 Pupils are very enthusiastic about learning a language and understand how important it is. French has been taught for two terms by a peripatetic native speaker to every pupil in Key Stages 1 and 2.  Currently pupils have around 45 minutes of French per week and there are plans to increase this by using the class teachers to reinforce the work done by the peripatetic teacher.

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Leadership and management of subject

 The subject is satisfactorily managed and the capacity to improve is good. You have a clear vision of how language teaching will develop in the school but have not yet had time to set this out in the school development plan.  There are plans to work with the local secondary school in order to ease transition and to amend the lesson planning as pupils move through the school to take account of what they have learnt.

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Implementing languages entitlement

 The school is well on the way to introducing an hour of languages for all pupils in Key Stage 2.  The teaching of speaking and listening is good but the teaching of reading and writing is less well developed.  There is a good emphasis on cultural awareness but links with other aspects of the curriculum are not fully exploited. Monitoring of performance is informal and is not yet used to inform planning.

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Inclusion

All pupils study French and all groups are achieving as well as they should given the short time they have been learning it.

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Areas for improvement, which we discussed, included:

 develop pupils’ reading and writing skills, especially by teaching sound/spelling links  to increase the links with other areas of the curriculum, especially literacy  to monitor pupils’ performance and ensure that they know what they have to do to improve.

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Areas for improvement, which we discussed, included:

I hope these observations are useful as you continue to develop modern languages in the school.

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Areas for improvement, which we discussed, included:

As I explained in my previous letter, a copy of this letter will be sent to your local authority and will be published on Ofsted’s website. It will also be available to the team for your next institutional inspection.

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