What is the impact of Specialist Languages Colleges (SLCs) on KS3 curriculum and teaching?
Heads of department in SLCs reported that the gaining of specialist status had a strong positive impact on the development of the languages departments at these schools. The most commonly reported areas of strong impact in the second survey were in: liaison with KS2; the use of ICT; provision of resources more generally; uptake at KS4; and diversity of languages offered at the school. There was much less perceived impact on classroom pedagogy. There appeared to be a relatively low level of impact of the work of SLCs on that of other secondary schools more generally. Contacts between non-SLCs and SLCs were not often reported and of those Heads who had had contacted SLCs in the second survey, a majority of them reported no or a little impact from the contact on their department. In an open question on future roles of SLCs, 95% of Heads from non-SLCs who responded the survey referred to the desirability of SLCs providing support for other schools. In contrast, only about half of the heads
