Cost of staff leaves schools tongue-tied on languages

Connor Perry (left) and Jack Schwarz follow French teacher Clare Bishop during a class at Kowhai Intermediate. Picture / Greg Bowker

Two principals say second languages are on every school's wish list, but even urban intermediates struggle to offer them.

Paul Douglas, principal of Kowhai Intermediate in the Auckland suburb of Kingsland, said many schools could not afford to employ fulltime language teachers for intermediate-age students, leaving them to put together "patchwork" arrangements that were not sustainable.

"Every educator can see the value of it. But one of the problems is ... attracting people to a job when you can't offer them a fulltime position."

Second languages were listed as a new basic "learning area" in the Government's draft curriculum from September 2007, which was released for submissions yesterday.

Kowhai Intermediate offers introductory German and French and advance bilingual lessons in French - a course funded by parents.

It started offering languages last year after getting about $7000 from the Ministry of Education's Learning Languages Funding Pool - set up in 1999 to fund resources at selected schools for second language options.

One of Kowhai's fulltime teachers is from Britain and has experience teaching French and German.

But Mr Douglas said few smaller schools could afford to employ teachers for language skills alone.

"You have to find teachers with that second string to their bow ... We are having to patch together bits and pieces and are heavily reliant on the good will of people and ingenious ways of fitting it all together."

Mr Douglas said Kowhai would soon also offer Chinese, but only because the Confucius Society had offered two hours of free lessons each week.

"You don't want to be leaving it any later than 11 or 12 years old to start new languages, but where will the money come from to do it in a sustained way?

"The kids are really interested in it, the schools are interested and the ministry has provided good resources, but you need people to deliver those resources effectively."

Ross Preece, principal of Murchison Area School, said it was not just an issue of funding - remote schools struggled to attract good teachers even for core subjects such as English.

Even trying to get a part-time language teacher to travel the 125km from Nelson one day a week would be hard.

The school had offered French, German and Japanese in the past and had been hoping to teach some languages this year.

However, languages were not a secure option for many students, because a teacher might move on, leaving them unable to continue.


WHO IS LEARNING WHAT?

42 per cent of primary schools, 64 per cent of intermediates and 95 per cent of secondary schools teach at least one second language.

About 85,000 students under Year 9 are learning languages, of which the most popular are French and Japanese.

Samoan is the most popular Pacific Island language - studied by 1853 students at 29 schools.

Maori is the most widely available language - studied by 23,148 students at 365 schools.