The Language Upskilling Specification addresses a major need of the primary workforce in the coming period. It has been designed to support the development of language upskilling courses for primary teachers and teaching assistants enabling them to move from “beginners” to “intermediate” or even “advanced” levels. Although general enough to respond to the broad needs of adult language learners it includes many contexts specific to teaching and learning and so will be of particular value for those working in primary schools.  The specification could also be of value for other teachers, for example secondary teachers who need to teach a language other than their specialism.

The target user audience for this work is training providers, including HEIs, Adult Education providers, Local Authorities, Specialist Language Colleges, the Cultural Institutes, private providers and others.  

The Language Upskilling Specification aims:

• To help teachers gain confidence in using (and improving their use of) Target Language in the classroom, enabling them to be more independent and experimental in using the language. This will in turn help their pupils learn and become confident with the Language.
• To strengthen links to the Oracy and Literacy strands of the KS2 Framework by cross-referencing language content with skills and activities
• To reinforce teachers’ understanding of language structures and of language learning strategies and, through its indicative content, to support their grasp of Intercultural Understanding.

The Language Upskilling Framework provides learning relating to all 4 language skills. Although generic in concept, the exemplar material will in the first instance be in French, German and Spanish.

Please explore the following sections for further information: Background; Who is it for?; Outline content; Using the Specification; Further support (or download this information as a pdf, 86kb)