Languages Sheffield is very pleased to present the City Languages Strategy that was launched in Europe Week in March 2004. Sheffield’s strategy is only the second of its kind in the UK.

The Strategy was the result of over a year’s consultations and meetings of a Partnership Group, chaired by Languages Sheffield (then called Multilingual City Forum), which brought together stakeholders from across all sectors of education, nursery and early years to higher, from business and from the City Council.  The membership of the Partnership Group can be found on page 2 of the Strategy document.  The main author was Geoff Swinn, then Languages Strategy Adviser at Sheffield LEA.

Languages Sheffield would welcome comments on the Strategy and its implementation (see contact details at the foot of this page) The Strategy and its contents on this website are copyrighted to Sheffield City Council.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STRATEGY

The latest stage of our promotion of Sheffield's languages is the completion (in February 2009) of the Profile of Sheffield's Language Policies. A Round Table has taken place in Sheffield to discuss the Experts' Report produced by the Council of Europe. This report follows a  City Report produced by Dr Mike Reynolds of Languages Sheffield and submitted to the Council of Europe in 2008. For this report (City Report: scroll down for Sheffield) and more information about the language education policy profiles produced by the Council of Europe go to this page of the COE website . The profile for Sheffield will be published on the first COE page in autumn 2009.

 The partnership group which produced the strategy is still functioning to implement the strategy, involving a cross-section of language interests in the city. Can you help? Please contact us if you can!

The Sheffield strategy  and its implementation is with reference to the National Languages Strategy

National Languages Strategy

This was launched on December 19th 2002. It has three ‘overarching aims’:

·         to improve teaching and learning of languages. Central here is the delivery by 2010 of an ‘entitlement’ to language learning to be offered to all pupils at Key Stage 2 (ages 7 - 10+).

·         to introduce, alongside existing qualifications, a ‘recognition system’ of language skills. A ‘ladder of recognition’ is envisaged to accredit language skills from beginner level to A level. Community languages will be included in this system, which will be voluntary.

·         to increase the number of people studying languages in further and higher education, and in work-based training.

For more information or to download the Strategy go to the National Languages Strategy page of the CILT (National Centre for Languages website.