Ofsted has revealed its views on the strengths and weaknesses of languages teaching in primary schools.

Its findings form the latest in a series of subject-themed reports produced following special inspections, which took place before the Covid-19 pandemic.

The watchdog is placing an increased emphasis on subject teaching through its new framework, with inspectors carrying out deep dives into particular subjects to gather evidence about the quality of education a school provides.

It is also producing reports based on special inspections, where the watchdog goes into schools specifically to focus on one subject.

Between October 2019 and March 2020, inspectors carried out 24 languages subject inspections in primary schools rated as outstanding, which were chosen at random.

A new blog outlining Ofsted’s findings has been written by Michael Wardle, the inspectorate’s subject lead for languages.

Mr Wardle said: “We wanted to identify good practice and strong curriculum management in the subject. We selected the schools at random from schools that we graded as outstanding at their last inspection.”

Here are the key findings:

1. Different models can work

Ofsted found three different models for teaching languages at the primary school it visited. These were:

• A specialist teacher is brought into school to teach languages.
• A teacher in school takes responsibility for its organisation and delivery.
• A native speaker member of staff is asked to lead the subject.

The inspectorate said that all three of these models can work effectively.

It said, in cases where a specialist teacher visits the school, class teachers practised what has been taught during the week in between languages lessons.

In schools where a teacher in school was responsible for organisation and delivery of the languages curriculum, they sometimes used bought packages, recorded sound files and organised good subject-specific continuous professional development.

2. Phonics are important 

Ofsted has praised some schools where it found curriculum leaders “had thought carefully about the phonics of the language being studied, focusing on how children pronounce sounds and how these are represented in writing”.

The report added: “Over time, pupils developed their ability to manipulate simple language step by step, doing work that steadily increased in complexity of simple grammatical concepts.

“When learning new words, pupils were encouraged to focus on a wide range of commonly used words, which included verbs as well as lists of nouns linked to a topic.”

3. A ‘more structured approach’ works

Inspectors also found that some languages were “perceived to lend themselves to a more structured approach”.

Ofsted found this to be the case with the teaching of Mandarin, Hebrew and Latin.

Mr Wardle said: “Here, in these examples, curriculum plans were generally more structured and precise. Each small step for pupils was mapped out due to the difficulties of the language. Indeed, although pupils had learned less vocabulary and fewer structures, they were expected to ‘do more with less’.

He added: “Potentially, the teaching of languages more commonly seen in classrooms could learn from this.”

4. Pupils can learn about culture, too

Ofsted said that, in the schools teaching languages really well, pupils “were clearly having a brilliant time learning to communicate in a different language and learning about different cultures” and “this was great to see”.

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However, the report also makes a series of criticisms about the way some primary schools are approaching languages teaching.

5. Some schools ‘barely out of starting block’

The new blog says that, given that many pupils should have been leaving Year 6 with four years’ worth of language study, it was disappointing to see how many schools were “barely out of the starting block with their curriculum”.

The watchdog said that, in some cases, this was because of changes in staffing when schools lost their language specialist.

In others, it was because leaders were focused on other areas of the curriculum. Sometimes Ofsted said there was “just a simple lack of expertise”.

It added: “Whatever the reason, the result was that several schools were only scratching the surface when it came to matching the scope of the national curriculum.”

It said in these schools, pupils were only able to respond to a few pre-rehearsed question-and-answer exchanges, and offer a few nouns, colours or numbers when asked.

6. More focus needed on building blocks 

The watchdog said that, in some schools, there was a misunderstanding of how to make progress in languages, step by step.

It added: “Rather than focusing on the building blocks of a language (phonics, grammar and vocabulary), some schools were simply increasing pupils’ stock of words, through different topics. There was little in the way of linguistic progression.”

7. More communication needed with secondaries

Inspectors said that they did not see much evidence of a joined-up approach to language teaching between key stages 2 and 3.

It said that on some occasions there was very limited communication between primary and secondary schools, and little sharing of the shaping of grammar, phonics and vocabulary between settings.

It is suggested that more focus on progression between these stages would support the government’s English Baccalaureate (EBacc) target, which is for 90 per cent of pupils to be studying for qualifications in the subjects that form the EBacc by 2025.

The pupils this target applies to are currently still in primary school.