Primary French in the Balance

Abstract

Summary During 1963, arrangements were made by the then Ministry of Education for a national experiment in foreign‐language teaching to be carried out in selected primary schools in England and Wales. The main purpose of the experiment, which came to be known as the Pilot Scheme for the teaching of French in primary schools, was to discover whether it would be both feasible and educationally desirable to extend the teaching of a foreign language to pupils who represented a wider range of age and ability than those to whom foreign languages had traditionally been taught. Under the Pilot Scheme, French was to be introduced into the primary school curriculum on an experimental basis from September 1964 onwards. The choice of French as the language to be taught was virtually inevitable, since it would have been impossible to provide an adequate teaching force for the implementation of the experiment if any language other than French had been chosen. In most of the schools taking part in the Pilot Scheme, French was to be taught throughout the primary stage of the experiment by class teachers who had received special in‐service training, rather than by specialist teachers of French. Arrangements were made to provide continuity of teaching at the secondary stage, so that all the pupils taking part in the experiment would be able to continue learning French without interruption for at least five years. Once the experiment had been set up, it was agreed that its effects should be evaluated over a period of years by the NFER. In the event, the NFER evaluation spanned the period 1964‐1974, taking the form of a longitudinal study of three age‐groups or ‘cohorts’ of pupils attending the schools taking part in the experiment. The sole criterion on which pupils were chosen for inclusion in one of the experimental cohorts was their date of birth. In the first instance, French was to be taught to all eight‐year‐old pupils in the selected primary schools from September 1964 onwards; thereafter, the teaching of French was to be extended to a further year‐group each autumn, until it involved all pupils in the 8‐11 age‐range. Thus, the first cohort to come under study was composed of all pupils in the large primary schools taking part in the experiment who fell within the age‐range 8‐0‐8#lb11 on 1st September 1964 and all pupils in the small primary schools who fell within the age‐range 8#lb0‐9#lb11 on that date: this provided a sample of approximately 5.700 pupils. (A wider age‐range was sampled in the small primary schools, to avoid the creation of unworkably small groups.) The second cohort was composed of all pupils in the large primary schools in the sample who fell within the age‐range 8#lb0‐8#lb11 on 1st September 1965: this provided a sample of approximately 5,300 pupils. Pupils in the small primary schools were not represented in the second cohort, since most children of an appropriate age had already been included in the French classes set up for the first cohort. Originally, the NFER evaluation was to have been based entirely on a longitudinal study of the pupils forming the first two experimental cohorts. It was hoped that the results of this study would provide sufficient information to enable valid conclusions to be drawn regarding the feasibility and advisability of teaching French at the primary level. As the experiment progressed however, it became clear that the pioneer status of the first cohort had entailed an atypical introduction to French. During the first year of the Pilot Scheme, for instance, difficult staffing problems were encountered which had not always been foreseen: in some primary schools, French teachers were absent without replacement for a whole term in order to attend intensive language courses in France; in others, no trained staff were available to teach French during the first term of the experiment, with the result that the first cohort pupils in these schools started to learn French one term later than the others in their age‐group. The first year of the experiment could therefore be regarded with some justification as an essentially exploratory period, calling into question the validity of using the results obtained from the study of the first cohort as a basis for future comparison. In view of these circumstances, it was considered advisable to extend the evaluation to a third cohort of pupils: those who would begin their study of French in September 1968. The third and final cohort to come under study was thus composed of all pupils in the large primary schools still taking part in the experiment who fell within the age‐range 8#lb0‐8#lb11 on 1st September 1968 and all pupils in the small primary schools who fell within the age‐range 8#lb0‐9#lb11 on the same date: this provided a sample of approximately 6,000 pupils. Inclusion in the experimental sample was again determined solely by the age of the pupil. This meant that the sample was drawn from all the socioeconomic strata normally represented within the national educational system and, in consequence, was characterized by a wide range of ability. The time‐span of the evaluation did not allow all the pupils taking part in the experiment to be studied for an equal period of time. The pupils in the first and third cohorts were under study for a total of five years: three years in the primary school and two years in the secondary school. The pupils in the second cohort were under study for a longer period: three years in the primary school and five years in the secondary school. During the ten‐year period of the evaluation, the main aims of the study were: (i) to investigate the long‐term development of pupils’ attitudes towards foreign‐language learning; (ii) to discover whether pupils’ levels of achievement in French were related to their attitudes towards foreign‐language learning; (iii) to examine the effect of certain pupil variables (such as age, sex, socio‐economic status, perception of parental encouragement, employment expectations, contact with France, etc) on level of achievement in French and attitude towards foreign language learning; (iv) to investigate whether teachers’ attitudes and expectations significantly affected the attitudes and achievement of their pupils; (v) to investigate whether the early introduction of French had a significant effect on achievement in other areas of the primary school curriculum. The main findings to emerge during the earlier years of the evaluation were published in two interim reports (Burstall, 1968, 1970); the recent publication of the final report (Burstall et al., 1974) brought together both the earlier and the later findings and provided an overall view of the effects of the experiment during both its primary and secondary stages. What follows is an attempt to review briefly the research evidence presented in the final report, but it must be borne in mind that limitations of space will inevitably impose a certain selectivity on this review. ∗Offprints are available from the NFER Publishing Company, 2 Jennings Buildings, Thames Avenue, Windsor, Berks. SL4 1QS, as follows: £1#lb50 per 10; £2#lb75 per 20; and £6#lb50 per 50 copies, postage included. Payment must accompany order.

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