Hayle School "Let's Fly!" on European Day of Languages
2 October 2008
The hustle and bustle of a Spanish airport descended on Hayle Community School for a day in celebration of the European Day of Languages and to mark this year’s launch of the School’s award winning Passport to Export languages competition.
Hayle School, a specialist language and business enterprise college, teamed up with Flybe and Newquay Cornwall Airport to transform the school hall as an arrivals and departure lounge of a Spanish airport and its international classroom, as the inside of a Spanish aircraft. The Let’s Fly theme aimed to promote the relevance of modern foreign languages in business.
Left to right: pupils Ryan, Melissa and Scott with Steve Parrott (Flybe), Tom Hickie (Cornwall Education Business Partnership) and John Topham (headmaster).
The whole of Year 10 pupils had to imagine that they were business travellers for the day. In the mock aircraft, pupils needed to speak Spanish to board, understand safety instructions and purchase goods in flight. On arrival in “Spain”, their Spanish speaking skills proved useful in dealing with baggage claims, security, customs, booking a local hotel and then, arranging a return flight to Newquay. Airport staff and various officials were played by A Level students studying Spanish at Truro College.
Workshops during the day included one with Flybe, a partner Business Language Champion to Hayle Community School, on the importance of modern languages in business today. UK Trade and Investment supported by Frugi’s Cut4Cloth Range delivered a workshop to show how foreign languages aid exporting products overseas.
Hayle School Pupils at "customs"
Cornwall Education Business Partnership also ran a workshop session and together with UKTI and the school, launched the new Passport to Export Competition for 2008/9. In July, Hayle Community School was the only school in the South West and one of only six secondary schools in the UK to win a coveted European Award for Languages.
John Topham, director of the school’s language college said: “This was a really different and exciting way to make languages real for our students and celebrate the European day of Languages. Some 120 pupils, aged 14 to 15 years, had great fun taking part and experiencing first hand, how language skills are a useful business skill.
“The event demonstrates the school’s changing approach to teaching languages. Now the emphasis is on students being able to speak a language. This is exactly what employers tell us they want and so, we are grateful to our business participants in enabling the day to happen.”
Richard Thomasson, Newquay Cornwall Airport operations manager said "With the increasing number of European destinations available from Newquay Cornwall Airport, we understand the need for languages within the workplace and we are delighted to support such an event".
Hayle School pupils at the "check-in desk"
Acclaim came also from Graham Watson MEP: “I’m delighted to learn of Hayle Community’s Languages in Business Day, ‘Let’s Fly’. This is the kind of enterprising initiative which we need to replicate around the region to ensure major international languages – like Mandarin and Spanish – are firmly at the centre of our schools’ activities. It’s increasingly clear that our children will not be able to rely on English alone in the future. In an interconnected world we will fall behind if we don’t address the gap in the market by promoting business languages like this. With internationalism on the agenda at Hayle, I have every confidence that its pupils will be well equipped to fly high in the world of work.”
The Regional Language Network SW is another event supporter. Gwyneth Leonard, manager said: “This was a great idea from Hayle Community School and its partners to make language learning an exciting career path opportunity. Hayle is widely regarded as an exemplar college in specialist language and business enterprise, through its innovative teaching approach and engagement with local and regional businesses and this is another feather in its cap!”
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