BASLA winners announced!

Congratulations to the winners of 2015 British Academy Schools Language Awards

These are the supplementary school winners (we are biaised here at NRCSE!) but there were also seven projects in the mainstream and arts & heritage sector. Interestingly this year Irish and Latin featured as well as a theatre project and a language library at City of London Academy to support the literacy of a pupils speaking a wide range of languages in the home. So go to the British Academy website and read about those winners too.

But here (fanfare, roll of drums) are the supplementary school BASLA winners!

Frederick Chopin Polish School in Southampton – the project will enable formal language teaching to be established for young people aged 14–17 in south Hampshire who speak Polish and English. The aim is to provide progression to higher levels of competence after they have completed GCSE.

Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service – a project seeking to exploit museum collections to provide cross curricular opportunities for developing speaking, listening and literacy skills in languages such as Malayalam, Portuguese, Polish and Lithuanian, spoken by families in Suffolk. Pupils will create a dual–language exhibition to share with family and visitors and gain sKills in the handling, interpretation and display of museum objects.

BAPS Swaminarayan School, Brent – the aim of this project is to provide professional training for voluntary teachers of Gujarati and to build capacity by developing the academic skills of current students in order to develop the next generation of Gujarati teachers.

Polish School Glasgow CIC – a project training secondary pupils to become radio presenters broadcasting in Polish. It aims to develop high level oral skills in Polish through the preparation of a weekly radio show covering topics such as music, drama and literature, as well as interviews with guests.

Dalgarno Supplementary School – the award will be used to develop a course to teach practical Arabic, French and Spanish through cooking, providing a positive, practical experience of language learning as well as cookery skills and an understanding of food safety.

Leicester Greek School and the Ashmole Greek School in London – the project aims to develop higher–level learning of Greek through ‘inquiry learning’ in cross curricular activities such as ICT, art, and photography.

Rauf Denktas Turkish School – a project designed to enable older students who attend the school to communicate for real purposes, supported by a programme of visits and talks from external speakers. The project involves stories, poems and the production of a school newspaper and will draw on interviews with parents and grandparents describing their experiences of migration from Cyprus or Turkey.

The judges also praised a number of other projects as highly commended:

• Bath Chinese School – Sustained Chinese Language learning programme

• Al–Ola Supplementary School – 1st Group (4–7 year olds): ‘Funny Phonics’;  2nd Group (11–14 year olds): ‘Speak Out, Speak Well’