José Picardo

The issue of Modern Foreign Languages take up has hit the news almost daily since the GCSE results were published last Tuesday. The fact is that numbers are in decline with no sign of abatement. Regardless of whether you have strong feelings or not about the place of languages in secondary education, hardly anyone would argue [...]

GCSE results were published yesterday. For the 23rd year running, the trend was an improving one, with more pupils getting better grades. It’s not all good news though. The statistics also confirm a continuing decline in take-up in foreign languages: the number of students taking a language has dropped by a third since the government made them optional [...]

Two years ago I attended a presentation by the inspiring Rachel Hawkes that focused on the multiple unique selling points of languages. In her presentation she mentioned how she had set up a Student Leadership Award at her school and how it had been a magnificent success. As she put it, the results were so good [...]

Last Saturday 10th July, a bunch of motivated and committed language teachers met at Nottingham High School to share practice on the use of new technologies in the classroom. The Nottingham MFL Show and Tell was organised by my colleague Kerry Turner and me and was of comprised a morning session packed full of presentations [...]

Tell Us Your Story is a charitable campaign that is giving people the opportunity to recognise and reward others who have made a positive impact on their lives or in their community over the past year. Aviva, the insurance service provider, is looking for people who can tell a story about anyone who has gone [...]