Report to LAGB Annual General Meeting from the Education Committee

Report to LAGB Annual General Meeting from the Education Committee

Academic year 2008-2009

Members of the Education Committee (EC) have been involved in a number of matters relating to linguistics and pre-HE education in the United Kingdom, largely through the workings of the Committee for Linguistics In Education (CLIE).

1.  The establishment of a UK Olympiad committee

Three members of the EC (Dick Hudson, Vivienne Rogers and Graeme Trousdale) are part of the UK Olympiad committee, which is organizing the first UK Olympiad to take place in 2010. The winner of this competition will go forward to take part in the International Olympiad at Uppsala, Sweden. We will be asking for support from members of the LAGB in the near future, and any member who is interested in being involved should contact the convenor of the UKLO, Dick Hudson. In 2009, two teams from the UK entered the international competition, having been guests at the Irish Linguistics Olymiad; one member of the UK team was awarded a bronze medal in the individual competition in Poland, and this success prompted the establishment of the UKLO.

2.  The PGCE survey

Thanks to generous donations from LAGB and other organizations, CLIE was able to fund a survey (currently being undertaken by Julie Blake and Tim Shortis) regarding the recruitment of graduates with degrees in English Language and in Linguistics to PGCE English courses. The project involves the collection of data from a large number of PGCE providers, and interviews with a subset of those who have responded to the questionnaire. We will report back on the results of this survey at the next AGM.

3.  The Languages Diploma

One of the CLIE meetings this year featured a presentation from Terry Lamb and Sharon Czudak on proposals for the Languages Diploma. Linguistics will feature quite significantly in the new diploma, in which there will be particular topics under the umbrella term ‘how language works’. Richard Hudson has been particularly involved in giving advice on the content of this component in the diploma. [Dick – can you add something more here about what you did? I can’t find any record of this in the CLIE minutes.]

4.  Response to the Rose review of the primary curriculum

CLIE produced a response to issues surrounding knowledge about language that appeared as part of the Rose review of the primary curriculum. This review proposed a reorganization for learning about language in the primary schools of England and Wales by bringing English and foreign language teaching together under a single ‘topic’. Particularly, the committee drew attention to the fact that much of the discussion about ‘language’ was in fact simply about ‘English’, without making this explicit, and creating some potential areas of confusion for children and parents whose first language is not English. For more details, please see CLIE’s full response to the review:

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/ec/clietop.htm

If any member of LAGB would like more information on these matters, or on other aspects of the work of the Education Committee, please contact one of the committee’s members:

Judith Broadbent:

Richard Hudson:

Vivienne Rogers:

Graeme Trousdale: