European Award for Languages Submissions Welcomed by National Centre for Languages

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Submissions are being sought for nomination to win the European Award for Languages in 2006 as the National Centre for Languages (CILT) seeks motivational and inspiring stories from the language education sector.

CILT are looking for the best of the best in language teaching, from all across education. Schools, colleges, business and other institutions across the UK will have just four months to demonstrate the existence and merits of their programmes. CILT are looking for creative, motivating and inspirational projects which will be considered for an Award, with further resources and cash prizes totalling more than £3,000 also on offer.

The Awards

The projects which are shortlisted will present their work to the judges. After this, the UK’s premier language projects will be finalised, with the winners receiving their awards from Sir Trevor McDonald at a prize-giving ceremony in Edinburgh, to take place on the European Day of Languages on the 26th of September. The award, which is also known as the European Label, recognises projects demonstrating an innovative, effective and replicable approach to learning languages.

Amongst the prizes are the Mary Glasgow Trust (founded by Mary Glasgow after a lifetime in languages, as a teacher, HM Inspector of Schools and later as a publisher, and now continued in her memory) with one of the winning projects will be selected by the to receive its annual award of £2,000. There is also the Award of £1,000 from the Training and Development Agency for Schools for the best project in initial teacher education.

Criteria

To be eligible, a project must satisfy certain criteria. It should be innovative (in other words, the initiative involves a new method, approach or resource, which improves on previous provision), effective (the project must be underpinned by verifiable progress towards learner targets) and replicable (the initiative should be able to be replicated in other contexts, with potential for development). The project can involve any language apart from English and based in the UK.

Aside from the awards above, the judges will make the following awards: the Adult Education Language Prize, the Business Language Prize (awarded to the best project developing language provision to match real needs in the workplace), the Community Languages Prize, the French Language Prize, the German Language Prize, the Italian Language Prize, the Primary Education Language Prize and the Spanish Language Prize.

Submissions must be made by Thursday the 13th of April 2006, and is supported by the European Commission and co ““ ordinated in the UK by CILT. To visit the CILT site for more information and to learn how to apply, please click here.

Jethro Marsh

Will an award promote languages enough? You tell us in the FE Blog

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