A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

1.5.1 The 1976 Nuffield Foundation Survey

The Nuffield Foundation carried out a new survey of the Pilot Scheme in an
effort to counterbalance the negative verdict of the NFER evaluation and to
establish under what conditions it would be feasible to introduce French into
primary schools. The survey aimed to investigate the impact of the Pilot
Scheme, review the situation of primary school French and consider any
possible scope for development ( Hoy, 1976, 1977).

The results ofthe survey, based on 71 returns from 105 questionnaires sent to
primary and secondary schools, were reported in 1977 by staff inspector Hoy in
'The Early Teaching of Modern Languages'. It was reported that an increase
had taken place in the teaching of French at secondary school but that there
was a notable decrease in the teaching of French in primary schools. Schools
commented positively on the experiment and thought that they had gained a
better understanding ofthe teaching of languages, they commented on the
large amount of useful materials the experiment had produced and on the
expansion in the support and training for modern languages. However,
teachers also aired a number of concerns. These were in the main a lack of
suitably qualified staff, inadequate methodology, lack Ofcontinuity between the
primary and the secondary phase, the view that French was incompatible with
the educational philosophy of primary schools whose main task was seen as
developing the basic skills of literacy and numeracy and the view that the status
of English as a world language made the study of another language seem
redundant.

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