Supporting speakers of community languages in developing their language skills and reaching out to the local community are ways in which primary schools can contribute to the Every Child Matters agenda and maximise children’s potential.

In offering after-school community languages classes, some schools are able to take advantage of Local Authority coordinated services in a variety of ways.

Some LAs, for example, recruit, train, fund and allocate tutors, whilst others provide just one or two of these services. Some LAs help to broker partnerships. This remit only occasionally sits with the LA languages team; ethnic minority achievement, equality and diversity, community, EAL, extended school, community languages and supplementary schools teams are known to have, or exist to have, this remit.

Where the Local Authority does not offer a coordinating role, some primary schools have turned to the supplementary or complementary sector direct for support. There are thought to be several thousand supplementary schools run within the community offering classes across a range of subjects in the evenings and at weekends.

It is worth noting that as community language learning tends to be more ‘stage not age’, supplementary schools often cater for pupils aged 4 through to 18 and a suitable supplementary school for your learners could be based at a secondary school.

Furthermore, a supplementary school can draw in pupils from up to 50 mainstream schools. You can find out more about supplementary or complementary schools from the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education (NRC), which operates a Quality Framework for Supplementary Schools as part of its work.  

The Our Languages website offers a searchable database of supplementary schools in your area (of England) teaching community languages. The Working together section of this website provides case studies and an extensive toolkit, available free-of-charge, on Partnerships in Language and Culture, to support the creation and maintenance of successful partnerships between mainstream and supplementary schools.

See KS2 curriculum models for initiatives to introduce a community language within the primary curriculum and Curriculum enhancement and Celebrating languages for further ideas. See the International dimension section for examples of partnerships with schools abroad.

Questions

- Have you contacted your Local Authority to explore support they may be able to offer in setting up language classes for your community language speakers?

- Are you in contact with local supplementary schools and community organisations which may be able to support after-school classes, work within the curriculum or special events?