Employment

Lourdes Secondary School

Lourdes Secondary School is a large, six year comprehensive Catholic school of serving the community of Cardonald and its surrounding areas. The school roll is approximately 1200.

At Lourdes Secondary School, learners study French during the broad general education (BGE). The department is hoping to introduce taster courses in S1 and S2 in Italian, German or Spanish and National 3/4 Italian in the senior phase.

For more information about the school, visit Lourdes Secondary School website.

Aims

The project with Jurys Inn gives the young people in S3 a real and engaging context for their learning and provides them with an insight into the world of work. It shows them how the learning of a language can enhance their career prospects as well as developing their skills for learning, life and work.

SCILT and the Modern Languages Department at Lourdes Secondary School worked in partnership with the staff at Jurys Inn in Glasgow city centre.

Jurys Inn

Jurys Inn is a four star hotel located in Glasgow city centre, a few minutes walking distance from Glasgow Central Station. It is the largest hotel in Scotland with 321 rooms. The hotel attracts tourists from various countries and they do not always speak English well. Linking with the hotel showed that languages are necessary in the hospitality industry.

The partners worked together to devise a project that would enhance teaching and learning in the S3 curriculum. As pupils already study the topics ‘home area’ and ‘world of work’ in S3, it seemed appropriate to use these contexts for the project. The General Manager and Human Resources Manager from Jurys Inn Hotel in Glasgow visited the school to speak to all S3 classes.

They spoke about the value of learning languages for the world of work. They emphasised that not only do languages help you to communicate with people from other countries, but the skills you develop when learning a language can be used in a wide range of jobs and industries. They also spoke about the importance of having the right attitude towards work by being positive, resilient and willing to learn. They spoke of the value of demonstrating good communication skills when dealing with other people, especially in the customer services industry.

The young people were given an insight into the hospitality industry and the wide range of employment opportunities available. The pupils responded very positively and were extremely enthusiastic about the visitors from Jurys Inn.

Some of the comments included:

“I learned that hospitality is not just about cooking.”

“I found all the different roles in the hotel rather interesting.”

“I learned that knowing different languages is really helpful and important.”

As a follow up, all S3 pupils took part in French workshops, based around the context of employability, and developed their reading, understanding, team work and problem-solving skills. They really enjoyed working in groups and succeeding in the various challenges.

Information Brochure

To conclude the project the young people created a brochure in French, providing information on Jurys Inn and tourist attractions in Glasgow. This links with the S3 curriculum. The managers from Jurys Inn selected the top tourist brochures from each class and the winners got the opportunity to visit the hotel to see first-hand exactly what is involved in running a large four-star hotel.

Ellie Russell's brochure was selected as one of the winning brochures.

Learners enjoyed the experience. They were engaged in the different activities offered and the project made the contexts they were studying much more engaging and relevant.

Some of the pupils commented:

"I enjoyed seeing how the hotel was managed and organised. It was an interesting insight into the hotel industry."

"It was a really good experience getting to see behind the scenes at such a big hotel. I am thinking about these jobs for when I am older and I would love to come back and stay in the hotel."

The staff also thought the project was a great opportunity for the learners to see the relevance of learning French and agreed that it had been very worthwhile.

The staff at Lourdes Secondary would like to continue to promote languages to learners in this way. One of the teachers said:

“We are hoping to continue building these links with Jurys hotel in the future and we would like to thank SCILT for helping us to establish this link. We regard it as a fantastic opportunity for our young people to learn about the importance of language learning in the world of work.”

The staff at Jurys Inn also benefitted from the project and are very keen to continue working with the school. The Human Resources Manager commented:

“We are hoping to keep the relationship going and even start working with Lourdes in other departments by possibly helping support their 4th year students on work experience placements.”