London South West Regional Consultative Group

London South West Regional Consultative Group is a networking and discussion group hosted by London Richmond and London Merton and Kingston Regional Support Groups.

Regional Consultative Group sessions

RCG 1: Thursday 28 September 2006
Items discussed:

• The decision has been made to maintain a joint London South West RCG
• Feedback was given from the NACELL RSG conference
• In line with suggestions from the NACELL conference it was proposed that one RCG should be held in Merton, one in Richmond and one with all London groups in Central London
• Dates and venues were agreed and appear on the NACELL website.
• Nick Bishop (LB Merton) will represent the group at the Sutton Conference on 5th October.
• Nick Power (LB Kingston) reported on the conference at Coombe Girls School which focussed on the Catherine Cheater SoW. Sue Tomes reported on the LCP scheme.
• Both groups will include Assessment in their RSGs, looking at the Asset Languages scheme, European Portfolio and the Lingua Badge qualification.
• Gordon Phillips (University of Kingston) informed the group that this year he has 44 students training for PMFL and is looking for more school placements. He invites experienced teachers to be involved with supervision. He also gave details of courses available for serving teachers.

RCG 2: Thursday 8 February 2007
Venue: Hampton Hill Junior School
Time: 14.00-15.30

Items discussed:

• Merton fed back on their recent RSG session on the forthcoming CILT Primary Languages website.  It was felt that this had been a very useful and practical session with useful information for class teachers as well as coordinators and trainers.
• Richmond discussed their recent RSG session, ‘Using Song and Rhyme in MFL teaching’.  Again, this was felt to have been a very useful and practical session with pair work and lots of audience participation.
• Richmond raised the issue of attendance at their RSGs and asked Merton for their input. It was felt that the two RSGs serve different purposes and groups of people so the attendance figures could not be fairly compared. It was agreed that the most appropriate forum for this discussion would be at the next RCG meeting at CILT.
• The QCA Scheme of Work was raised. It was felt by all attendees that once this document is available, it would be a good focus for an RSG next year.
• Christine Capon is in the process of producing a pack of resources on Intercultural Understanding which will be distributed to Richmond teachers in the Summer Term.
• Issues surrounding budgets and organisation were then discussed. 
• Sue Tomes then gave feedback from the Languages Review, which she attended at the DfES. 
• To finish the meeting, the groups discussed their plans for 2007/8. Merton are looking forward to their Conference on 29th March. They have a host of speakers presenting resources and methodology such as the LCP Scheme for Years 5 and 6 and How to motivate Language Learning. There will also be the opportunity to discuss future plans.  Christine Capon and Tiffany Petty are to attend the Conference. Richmond’s next meetings are on 21st March at Kew Riverside School – CILT Primary Languages website and 2nd May led by Jenny Carpenter on story telling.

The next RCG meetings were set for 27th September 2007 at Wimbledon Chase School and 7th February 2008 at Collis Primary School as it was felt that these meetings had been and would continue to be beneficial.

RCG 3: Thursday 3 May 2007 (Central RCG meeting)
Venue: CILT, the National Centre for Languages
Time:14.00-16.00

For this meeting the London Support Groups met together at CILT.  The meeting was convened by Caroline Conlon and Paul Saich took the chair.
Each of the Support Groups reviewed the work of their RSG, looking at highlights and why they were successful, together with what could be improved. We examined the make-up of the RSG participants and their role in the delivery of PMFL.
We looked at plans for the academic year 2007/2008 and shared thoughts on the proposed contents. We also discussed the possibility of joining together for one of our sessions to take the form of a Primary Languages Conference, based in London. 
We reviewed how far each group had been able to achieve the purpose of RSGs, whose aim is to build capacity in primary schools across their regions.

NACELL Regional Support Groups are funded by the DfES and co-ordinated by CILT, the National Centre for Languages in support of the National Languages Strategy.