Language Teachers for Every School

Let every student in your School Network fall in love with Spanish or Mandarin

Language Provision

RE-IMAGINED

The Sydney Catholic Schools (SCS) network has a bold vision for languages: To provide a language program for every one of their 150 schools. 70,000 students on a shared pathway to becoming global citizens.

Even in a large metropolitan region like Sydney, Australia, access to language teachers is not possible for every school. Having the same quality of program at each school is even harder. The task of solving these challenges has been taken on by Meg Languages and the results are forcing school networks to re-imagine what is possible in delivering a challenging part of the curriculum.

Incremental rollout

Meg Languages currently provide a language program to more than 7,500 SCS students with significant growth having occurred every year. SCS ran an initial pilot with one school in 2019 before expanding languages to 10 schools in 2020, 18 schools in 2021 and currently have 36 schools participating in 2022 with an eye to expanding further throughout the year.

2019
150 students

2020
1,500 students

2021
3,500 students

2022
7,500 students*

*all student numbers are an approximation

Monitoring Progress Across a Network Wide Application

Meg Languages implements a 3 tiered governance structure which involves meeting quarterly with network/district leaders as part of a Steering Committee on the program’s progress across all schools and discusses network-wide strategic initiatives.

Your dedicated Meg Languages account managers engage with individual school leadership to ensure smooth delivery at the school level.

Meg Mandarin has been seamlessly integrated into our Year 7 timetable. We have one class of 28 students participating in five lessons of Chinese every two weeks. The learning has been engaging for all students with a mixture of speaking, writing and cultural understanding. Each module thoroughly aligns with the curriculum and is, in fact, providing activities to promote greater depth for student learning as well as appropriate differentiation for each lesson.

- Sharyn Quirk, Principal

Meg Languages program coordinators provide ongoing support to classroom teachers in the delivery of lessons

We just wanted to send a quick thank you for the lessons that you set up today for the Year 6 Mandarin lessons. We learnt a lot as to how we can most effectively use Zoom along with some of the tricks you can implement. We really appreciate the support and are looking forward to being able to continue our Chinese lessons with you in this format.

- Liz Chatlier and Meghan Bassett, Teachers

Network-wide data collection

86% of students were able to describe and give
information about themselves and their
preferences while 81% of students were able to
translate everyday expressions and use context to
assist with interpretation.

Students were asked to respond to questions like:

‘what country are you from?
你(nǐ)是(shì)哪(nǎ)国(guó)人(rén)

‘where do you live?’
你(nǐ)住(zhù)在(zài)哪(nǎ)儿(er)

‘can you translate this passage for me’
我(wǒ)是(shì)中(zhōng)国(guó)人(rén)，我(wǒ)的(de)
爷(yé)爷,(ye)是(shì)中(zhōng)国(guó)人(rén)，我(wǒ)
的(de)爷(yé)爷(ye)很(hěn)高(gāo)

Achievements: Students describe and give information about themselves and their preferences, environment, experiences and interests

Internationalising schools within the Network

Our in-house experts work with participating schools to develop a Going Global strategy to support the school in developing global competencies among staff and students.

Below are our key 2022 initiatives to inspire and enable all Meg Languages schools within a network to go global:

Global Citizenship Student Ambassador Program

We invite schools at participating networks to select Global Citizenship Student Ambassadors to represent thier school.

Throughout this program, they will lead initiatives on developing Global Citizenship across the school community, with the support and inspiration of the national network of Meg Student Ambassadors. The participating staff member and students benefit from our group sessions, brainstorming and discussion on topics such as: Diversity, equity and intersectionality; social enterprise; and Global Citizenship.

At the end of the year, our student ambassadors will have created a globally minded project with the intent of serving the wider community and bettering the world.

Run an International Day

We provide supportive live or self paced professional development programs to help schools plan an International Day.

International Days are a wonderful celebration of community, where schools and students get to showcase their language programs, as well as honour the cultural and linguistic makeup of the school. This event highlights globally focussed learning experiences to the wider school community through a student lens.

Embed the UN Sustainable Development Goals across the curriculum

This program helps schools and educators understand more about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and why they are an important piece in developing Global Citizenship in schools. We explore how they can be embedded into teaching and learning across the curriculum in all school contexts. This session will give participants the tools they need to develop a whole school culture supported by the SDG’s.

Upskilling classroom teachers

In addition to learning a language, your teachers will have unlimited access to our professional learning opportunities and self-paced online courses.These are provided to networks to help schools get the most out of having a language program and to develop a Global Classroom

Cost savings

It is estimated that the Meg language programs are 36% cheaper for SCS than if they were to hire language teachers to cover all of their schools through traditional means.

Ready to talk?

Our students have thoroughly enjoyed learning Mandarin. The lessons are always fun, engaging and interactive. The teachers are enthusiastic and present learning in a fun way through the use of games, singing an positive feedback. Learning Mandarin presents an opportunity to gain an appreciation and understanding of another culture and to connect with the world.

- Pauline Dinale, Principal