We work with businesses and schools to build capacity in language and employability skills.
School: Castlebrae Community Campus Project: Languages beyond the classroom Level: Bronze Date: June 2023
During a dedicated week, Castlebrae Community Campus launched Languages Beyond the Classroom for all of S3. During their languages classes, pupils explored pathways, future careers related to languages and had discussions about what is needed to follow these careers.
Through the DYW lead in our school, a representative from Heart of Midlothian Football Club did 3 separate sessions with the classes. She explained her career path after studying languages at university and the opportunities this gave her. She linked back to footballers around the world and discussed their skills. There was a lot of participation from pupils and this prompted a few course choice changes for S4!
The Languages Beyond the Classroom focus week organised for the learners of Castlebrae Community Campus is an excellent initiative, giving a rich and contextualised opportunity for high-quality input, as this submission shows. The partnership with Heart of Midlothian football club is an original and engaging one which has clearly had a very positive impact on pupils’ interest in languages and on uptake.
The verification team was impressed by how the project showed the benefit of language skills in different roles at the club, including Ann Park’s job for example, where the benefit might be less obvious, meaning that it would appeal to people with different interests/employment aspirations. Another team member described the project as ‘inspirational’!
We are delighted to say that this project meets the criteria for a BRONZE Scottish Languages Employability Award. Congratulations!
This is a project which has enormous potential to be expanded to include other year groups and other partners, and if so a further submission would be very welcome and would be highly likely to achieve a Silver or Gold Award.