The overall objective of the Language College at KEGS is to raise standards of achievement and the quality of teaching and learning in modern foreign languages for all pupils, and use this as a catalyst for whole school improvement.

The Language College at KEGS is an active partner with our local family of schools, colleges, higher education institutions, business and the local community, and our aim is to promote the sharing of resources and development of good practice. Working with a wide of primary schools, we intend to help children progress from primary language learning through to lifelong enjoyment of language learning.

Language Colleges play a key role in supporting the National Languages Strategy, which aims to transform the country’s capability in languages, encouraging “languages for life” and “languages for all”.

We aim to be an international centre of learning, in technological, enterprising and vocational education, valuing language learning as a key skill for UK citizens of the 21st century.

We value and support the community languages of all our pupils, and provide young people with the skills needed to progress into employment, further training or higher education according to their individual needs.

We aim to raise participation rates in modern foreign languages and enhance language learning opportunities both for our pupils and for their local learning community.

As leading practitioners we aim to share our expertise with other Language Colleges and with national and international networks of schools to promote excellence and innovation.

A Centre of Excellence : KEGS Language College

KEGS was designated as a Language College in April 2008, and all languages staff have been working with much enthusiasm to develop and shape our future languages provision, under the leadership of Alan Torrie who is Director of our KEGS languages provision and Jane Breen who is Director of our Community provision.  Working with Robin Newman who oversees the specialism and acts as an advocate at Senior Leadership level, and Jason Need (representing the Governing Body), they form, with the Headteacher Thomas Sherrington, the Language College Steering Group.

The aim of KEGS Language College is to further develop challenging and interesting languages opportunities for our students, as well as working with students from a number of primary and secondary partner schools and adults in the community. 

Language College status has enabled KEGS to offer opportunities to students to try out languages which are new to them: Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Spanish.  Specialist study days have been arranged to allow students to explore different aspects of other countries, including art, biology, history, customs and tourism, using a wide variety of media.  Gifted and Talented students, both at KEGS and in our partner schools, have been offered opportunities to study languages in a creative and engaging way.

Within KEGS, the Language Department has worked collaboratively with the History, Science, English and Maths departments to develop projects to inspire students to see languages in a new light and to view them as an integrated part of other learning.

In the wider community, conferences such as the recent KEGS-led ‘Languages Leading Learning’ have showcased new and exciting cross-curricular teaching techniques to colleagues from across the whole of Essex, enabling them to exchange ideas and good practice with each other in an inspirational way: one delegate commented “Amazingly useful and powerful – I have never attended a course where so many great ideas were shared.  They have invigorated me!”.

Older students have been encouraged to run Language Clinics for younger students and achieve a Foreign Language Leaders award qualification. They have also participated in cross-curricular events, including a community science session in French for two of our primary partner schools, and even our youngest students have been involved, taking a German and French handball session to another primary partner.

Language College status has benefited our own students through increased resources, opportunities and support and, in turn, enabled our students and teachers to pass on their knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject to the wider community.