Cornish school wins top European award for languages
10 July 2008
Teachers from Hayle Community School in Cornwall travel to London on the 16th July to receive a coveted European Award for Languages 2008 from Sir Trevor McDonald for the school’s “outstanding” Passport to Export language initiative.
Photograph: the winning team of the Passport to Export language initiative from Hayle School
A specialist language and business enterprise college, Hayle is the only school in the South West region and one of only six secondary schools in the UK to win a prestigious European Award for Languages. The college has been recognised for its creativity in improving the quality of language teaching, motivating students and making best use of available resources. The Award is a European wide initiative supported by the European Commission and CILT, the National Centre for Languages.
Hayle Community School is already an award winning Regional Language Network South West Business Language Champion. Over the last three years, it has developed imaginative ways of making learning languages relevant for students by involving the local business community.
The European Award for Languages is for the UK Trade & Investment sponsored “Passport to Export” initiative organised by Hayle Community School and the Cornwall Education Business Partnership. The competition combines a business challenge with languages for Year 10 students who are asked to design a product using local materials that would sell well in Spain. Teams of students then pitched their ideas in English and Spanish via a video link to commercial staff at the British Embassy.
This year’s winning student team at Hayle – Emma Bates, Taylor Blake, Ryan Elliott, Daniel Mayho, Natasha Parcell and Luke Rudkin - have recently returned from a memorable competition prize visit to the British Embassy in Madrid where they met the British Ambassador, Mrs Denise Holt and UKTI representatives. The team explained how the “business” has grown into “Forever Flowers” and is now to represent Cornwall in a Young Enterprise competition.
John Topham, director of the school’s language college said: “Hayle School is thrilled and excited to get this fantastic recognition for our approach to developing the language skills of our pupils. Thanks go to businesses who shared their export experiences with the competing teams and staff from UKTI and Cornwall Education Business Partnership who helped to make it work.”
Gwyneth Leonard, RLN SW manager said: “This is a well deserved accolade for Hayle Community College which has shown real innovation in combining a business challenge with languages to make language learning exciting and a career path opportunity.
“The College is a real asset to Hayle and people there and across Cornwall can be really proud of these young people and their achievements.”
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