Routes into Languages East Midlands is tasked with increasing participation in languages amongst pupils attending school in and living in areas of social disadvantage.
The Consortium which is led by Nottingham Trent University has a strong history of working collaboratively with outreach departments within each partner institution, and has since its incipience, worked almost exclusively with target schools to bring awareness raising languages projects to groups with low participation rates in languages and low rates where progression into Higher Education is concerned.
The East Midlands Consortium’s projects are informed and designed by outreach colleagues and academic staff in modern languages departments, and this collaboration has ensured that an innovative suite of activities, suitable for the target audience has been developed. The East Midlands Consortium is well placed to advise the consortia nationally, with regard to working successfully with said groups.
One of the main functions of the Consortium is to ensure that targeting on national level is appropriate, and for this purpose, we have liaised with the East Midlands Widening Participation Research and Evaluation Partnership, which has shared targeting data and criteria with all the Routes into Languages Consortia. The EMWPREP has put together school profiles for schools across the UK based on factors such as: free school meals, postcode and G.C.S.E results.
In addition to the data provided, Routes East Midlands organised a conference last year which provided the Project Managers nationally with guidance regarding using the datasets to best effect, as well as best practice when working with pupils from Widening Participation backgrounds.
