Flybe -
Sidmouth Community College
Sidmouth Community College and Flybe have already started to think about longer-term possibilities for
their partnership. Rob Derbyshire from Sidmouth and Steve Parrott, Director of Personnel at Flybe have discussed how languages have an impact on accountancy and ICT at the airline, and the company's language needs.
Languages important for all
Flybe are keen to help the teachers to get the message across that languages are an extremely useful choice
for students' future careers, and Steve Parrott has already visited to talk about how the Personnel Department values employees with language skills. Long-term goals for the partnership are to hold a careers fair, and to try to motivate more boys to
study languages by emphasising the vocational aspect.
Steve Parrot explained his reason for getting involved in the initiative: “Being a Business Language Champion is enabling us to motivate and encourage the region’s future linguists. Without students continuing to study languages we will not have a pool of talent from which we can draw future employees.
“With so much of our business having an international slant we can’t afford to not use languages as it would leave us at a severe disadvantage to our competitors. We are only too happy to spread the message to the region’s students, that having languages are as essential to international business as having a PC and that when applying for a job having a second language, even at conversational level without the formal qualifications, will give applicants a distinct advantage over others in the recruitment process.
Rob Derbyshire who teaches languages at Sidmouth Community College described the value that the students got from the presentation: “The students were able to see first hand how important languages are for their future career opportunities and that there is a market for them in the South West with such companies as Flybe.
“With an increasing amount of schools dropping languages from their curriculum, it was really valuable to have Steve here to demonstrate how vital language and cultural skills are to their international business opportunities.
“Students don’t often get the opportunity to see how languages are used in a real work place environment, having Flybe as our Business Language Champion and presenting to the students is a great way for them to see how languages are a key business tool in today’s increasingly international market place.
“With Flybe as our Business Language Champion, they are demonstrating how language skills form an essential part of their international business so the students were able to get a taste for the way languages are used in business today. It is essential that they know that continuing to study languages will enhance their future career opportunities. We cannot afford to drop further behind our European counterparts.
“The students appeared to get a lot out of the session and were well motivated to ask questions and even asked about continuing their languages into Year 12 which is really positive and as a result we're looking at putting on Spanish as a beginners course.”
