Tweet
Sunday 12 July 2015
He and his classmates at Horton Park primary school, in Bradford, have been learning Arabic for three years now, courtesy of a drive by the British Council to boost the take-up of the language in state schools.
His teacher, Saleh Patel – one of the few Arabic teachers working full-time in a British primary school - had told the class to link the pictures on the cards with the correct word in Arabic to describe them.
Later in the lesson they were set the task of writing a sentence in Arabic. “I find it difficult,” said another 10-year-old, “but I try my hardest.” (Arabic is written from right to left – try doing that in English and you will understand how hard it can be.) There is, though, an enormous sense of enthusiasm in the classroom as the pupils try to master the language.
The project is one of eight initiated by the British Council, which was spurred by its research that rated Arabic as the second most important language for workers of the future (Spanish was rated the most important).
The study took into account Britain’s export links, government trade priorities, diplomatic and security priorities and the most popular holiday destinations.
“There are more than 300 million Arabic speakers across the world – in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Faraan Sayed, who has been working on the programme for the British Council.
In eight clusters of schools around the country 1,000 pupils study Arabic as part of the curriculum while a further 500 are learning the subject in lunchtime and after-school clubs. These are in Belfast, Sheffield, Manchester, London (where there are two), Barnstaple in Devon, Blackburn and Bradford.
In Manchester, the independent Manchester Grammar School asked some of its Syrian pupils to help with the recruitment of an Arabic teacher. They recruited an Iraqi-born teacher with the result that the school’s development plan now has Arabic GCSE provision planned from 2016.
The drive to teach Arabic will be stepped up when the British Council sends out a “language and culture” pack to around 5,000 primary schools in September, in an attempt to persuade them to take up the subject – and give their pupils an insight into the culture of the Arabic world.