I have been obsessed with languages for goodness knows how long. A funny thing, really, when you consider that I only really speak two languages fluently as an adult. I remember asking for a Berlitz teach yourself Spanish book for Christmas when I was eight and how thrilled I was to actually get it. Over the years, I’ve been to German Saturday school, been through French immersion and studied Latin at school, peddled my bicycle up to the University of North London for evening classes in Dutch when I lived in West London, and hogged the teach yourself Breton tapes from the public library for months until they finally recalled the book on the basis that someone else in Ottawa wanted to borrow it (who’d have thought??). It is not unsurprising, therefore, that I have given a lot of thought as to how I can give my daughter the best chance of learning more languages than me. And better.
We considered the French system in London. The lycée has several primary school branches in London in addition to the main branch in South Kensington which also houses the secondary school. There are also several private French and bilingual (French/English) schools in London, most of them subsidised by the French state to varying degrees and therefore presenting rather more affordable options than English prep schools too. If it weren’t so far away, we’d also consider the Colegio Espanol on Portobello Road. Another bargain, by the way, at under £1,000 per term. (The German, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian schools, all south of the Thames, are rather less affordable, plus I have a little less personal interest in these languages.) Despite the fact that plopping your child into a school where all the others speak another language is undoubtedly the best way for them to learn a language, there are two factors that make any of these expatriate schools slightly less than perfect: their revolving door nature (expats come and go as parental tours of duty in London start and terminate) and the fact that most have an order of priority that puts non-nationals at the bottom of the pile (although I bet those that don’t receive subsidies from foreign states become a lot more welcoming of non-nationals with the credit crunch). So where does that leave those of us who would like our children to acquire another language at an early age?
Well, as it happens, something wonderful is taking hold in the U.K. in this regard. Forty-some years after the introduction of the first immersion programmes in St. Lambert, Quebec (English pupils were immersed in French with a French teacher but with other English pupils), we’re seeing the beginning of a trend here in the U.K. Immersion in a non-heritage language. Wales has had Welsh-medium state schools for years (and there is in fact also a private Welsh-medium school in Willesden, North London) while there have been Gaelic-medium state schools in Scotland for several years. But what we have not had until recently are immersion programmes in non-heritage languages such as French or Spanish or Chinese or any other language which is not the language spoken at home.
Research has shown that pupils develop a much higher level of proficiency in their immersion language than occurs when this language is simply taught as a school subject as it is in English schools (or at least where languages are still taught at all.) The research also shows that their attainment in English and other school subjects such as mathematics, science, history, geography, etc. does not suffer compared to their peers who are not in immersion programmes, although immersion pupils tend to be behind their mainstream peers initially in English. However, when English is introduced a few years later (usually in the equivalent of Year 4), immersion pupils quickly make up for lost time and often surpass their non-immersion peers with respect to English reading and writing. Early immersion, rather than immersion beginning in Year 5 or in high school, and total rather than partial immersion, have tended to produce the best results.
Walker Road Primary in Aberdeen started the immersion experiment in 2000. The first cohort has now moved on to secondary school. What made the experiment in Aberdeen all the more interesting for me is the fact that immersion was attempted in a school whose catchment is decidedly more deprived than the average. (In the early days of immersion in Canada, allegations were regularly thrown around that immersion was a tool used by the middle classes to segregate the middle classes from those below on the socioeconomic or even ability ladder.) Wix’s School in Wandsworth opened as the first bilingual school in September 2006. It was the product of the relationship of the head of the English-language Wix’s School (a pretty much bottom-of-the-league-tables school) and his counterpart at the French lycée primary occupying the same building. The bilingual stream was so oversubscribed that there is another in the early planning stages at Hotham School in Putney (also in the same LEA as Wix), and even Wix is considering expanding its bilingual stream. These schools draw on local, rather than expat, pupils so you have none of the revolving door of an expat school. And non-French nationals have a hope in Hell of getting in. And when they do, it’s free. Now if I can only get one of the local subperforming primaries near me to follow in their suit, I might actually be interested in sending my daughter there.
Snowdon on Schools 