Report from UCML Scotland

Report from UCML Scotland

January 2015

1. Links with Schools

After a period of lobbying the Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council for dedicated funding to promote links between the schools sector and HE in Scotland, funding has now been secured via SCILT for part of a post, based at SCILT, to manage and promote these links. Initially the aim will to be implement at a national level initiatives which have already been developed locally in a range of locations and institutions. These are: Word Wizard, Mother Tongue/Other Tongue, Business Breakfasts, and Language Ambassadors. We are very grateful to colleagues at SCILT for their support in this.

2. Research

One of the findings of our initials sounding with all stakeholders was the lack of an evidence base for the initiatives we wished to promote. In addition to this, the Scottish Government’s 1+2 policy has highlighted a number of challenges for languages pedagogy and questions about the role of language teaching and learning in society. A number of interested parties, including UCML Scotland, hasinitiated a collaboration with the aim of securing funding to begin to build up a Scottish Centre for Languages Research. This will be part of the focus of our symposium in May. The aim is to establish a network which will allow researchers from a range of approaches and backgrounds to contribute to a broad based research strategy focused on language learning.

3. Symposium

We are once more holding a symposium in May, which will be open to stakeholders from universities, schools, local authorities, the government, the cultural institutes and other interested parties. Professor Do Coyle, Head of the School of Education at Aberdeen University, will be the keynote speaker. The theme of the symposium will be the implementation of the two broad themes itemised above. The symposium is being jointly organised with SCILT.

4. Links with Departments/Schools of Education

One of the issues which has been identified since the process of implementing the 1+2 policy began has been a disconnect between university language departments and schools and departments of education. While the linguistic expertise evidently lies in the language departments, most of the discussion surrounding implementation has taken place with schools of education. After discussions with the Scottish Government, if has been agreed that UCML Scotland will have a representative on the group charged with the implementation of the policy.

Mary Fischer

Chair, UCML Scotland

15 January 2015