London Borough of Havering Europa Centre for Modern Languages

The London Borough of Havering was part of the CILT Good Practice Project which ran from September 1999 to March 2001 investigating key issues surrounding early language learning. The following report was written in 2000.

The London Borough of Havering Europa Centre was originally set up by Havering Council for local secondary schools and colleges in 1987. The Centre is laid out in the form of a Continental village with streets, shops, a market square and even a puppet theatre. Both primary and secondary schools from all over the country now visit the Centre during the school day to simulate trips to France, Germany or Spain. The roles of the inhabitants of the town are played by native speaker language assistants, some of whom also work as foreign language assistants Havering schools and colleges.

In 1993 the Europa Centre began to organise classes for primary school children after school and on Saturday mornings. Over 400 children aged 4-11 from the local area currently attend the Centre once per week for 45 minutes to learn French, German, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu or Japanese. Parents pay the fees directly to the Europa Centre.

Having such a large number of children attending the Europa Centre classes has the advantage that classes can be offered at a range of levels and with no more than two or three years age difference.

Most tutors are native speakers who have gone on to work as primary class tutors after gaining experience working in Europa Centre simulation visits and in local schools. Training is provided by the Europa Centre and there are normally one or two meetings of tutors each term, as well as a training day at the beginning of each academic year work on aspects of teaching methodology, schemes of work and resources.

The Europa Centre has a detailed scheme of work for each language to cover the first two or three years of language learning, depending on the age of the children. After one or two years older children (8-11) graduate on to an appropriate textbook. We are currently using Passe partout for French, Projekt deutsch for German and Aventura for Spanish.

The scheme of work is currently being revised to make it more appropriate for the youngest (infant) learners, i.e. to reflect their world, experience and interests to a greater degree. All children of primary school age, but especially those children aged 4-7 years, benefit from learning language through games, songs and story telling.

Most lessons are based in classrooms, but from time to time, as appropriate, tutors bring their classes into the Europa Centre itself to use the facilities of the town to practise and reinforce what children have learnt: for example by asking the way, ordering a drink or an ice cream, or just using the huge collection of items in the different shops as an aid to vocabulary learning.

In addition to the classes held in the Europa Centre, Europa Centre tutors also teach French in a number of local primary schools, either as an after-school activity or during the school day. After nearly seven years the Europa Centre and its staff have built up a great deal of experience in teaching foreign languages to primary aged children. Havering has now incorporated primary languages into its Educational Development Plan. A major focus of activity for the next two years will be to encourage more Havering primary schools to take up the teaching of a modern language during curriculum time and use the expertise built up to help train non-specialist primary school teachers to do this. French, German and Spanish language and methodology twilight courses will be offered to primary teachers from September and it is hoped that participants will subsequently be able to take part in a LINGUA funded course in France, Germany or Spain.

What's Happening