Barriers to community language teachers
Joe Lepper
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Ofsted is calling for better support for teachers specialising in community languages such as Arabic, Bengali and Mandarin.
In its report Every Language Matters, the watchdog found widespread barriers to teachers wanting to take a specialist community language Postgraduate Certificate in Education Courses(PGCE).
Too many were unable to access these courses because choice of location was limited and too few offered a part time option.
Of the 134 community language teachers surveyed for the report only half were PGCE qualified and most of these were in subjects other than languages.
Among skills gained through being PGCE qualified are IT, pupil progress assessment and managing behaviour.
Recommendations put forward by Ofsted include web based training for community language teachers and more flexible, part time courses.
The Training and Development Agency for Schools is also being urged to review PGCE language courses so that a wider range of languages other than French, German and Spanish are being offered.
Ofsted education director Miriam Rosen, said: “We found that people want to have the opportunity to learn community languages, despite the barriers existing today.”
