How Lift Firth Park is building teaching consistency and learner confidence in Spanish with Oak

The pilotLift Schools' Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) pilot

Lift Schools is a multi-academy trust made up of 62 primary, secondary and special schools, educating more than 33,000 pupils across the country - from Middlesbrough in the north to Devon in the west, Essex in the east and Isle of Wight in the south.

Since January, several Lift secondary schools have been piloting Oak's French and Spanish curricula.

Debs McCarthy, Director of Curriculum at Lift Schools, says the trust chose Oak for this pilot because it "draws on the best evidence and research about classroom language learning to select and sequence content for maximum impact. Combined with its coherent unit and lesson resources, the programme offers a really strong foundation for any languages department."

Early feedback has been positive.

Lift Schools CEO Becks Boomer-Clark says teachers value both the quality and flexibility of the resources:

"We're finding that our teachers are enjoying using the resources, and most importantly they are finding it a really useful platform but not a constraint. They still feel they can do something with the resources, play with them and have fun with them in their classrooms, which is really important."

Watch Becks Boomer-Clark’s full feedback here:

Show transcript

Show transcript

- So Becks, can you tell us a bit more about how you're starting to use Oak at Lift? How's it going so far?

- It's going really well and I think it sort of, it also speaks to our approach. I think we often suffer from acute case of not invented here syndrome in education. And the challenge that we set ourselves before we embark upon creating anything new is actually, should we build this ourselves? Could we buy it from somebody else or could we partner to make something that will be better than, and certainly more time-effective than us going alone? And so, we use quite a wide range of different curriculum resources. They always need to be aligned to those core Lift specifications, so the core knowledge.

- Yeah.

- So, we don't send that out, offer that out to other people to determine. We're like, this is what we think is really important for all of our kids. In terms of Oak, we're using it at the moment for languages and for art. And the mantra that we sort of use when we're sort of piloting something is you need to adopt and improve. Let's think about how we can make something better. And in terms of the use of curriculum resources and materials from Oak, it's actually what can we do in the implementation? The strong curriculum engineering, the clear alignment around the sort of principles of curriculum design, the intentionality in the sequencing and the evidence base that all of the Oak resources are based upon, that gives us a really strong, that's a set of givens really that gives us a strong platform to be able to say actually in the same way that materials that we may design in other aspects of the curriculum, there are certain things that as a teacher, you don't need to tinker around the edges of the sequencing of the content, if you like, but actually that gives you real space to understand, well, how am I gonna take this content and bring it to life for the children that are in front of me today? It's going well. We're finding that our teachers are enjoying using the resources and most importantly, and this sort of, you'll hear this as a theme throughout, they're finding it a really useful platform, but not a constraint in a sense that they still feel as though they can do something and play with the resources and have fun with them in their classrooms, which is really important.

- No, that's wonderful to hear because obviously, you know, when you make a curriculum that is sort of at a national level, it's quite hard to give it that context and that fun and that ownership, but you've got to be able to leave space for that in a way that allows schools to really take it and make it their own. And it sounds like that is exactly what your teachers have been doing. And I'm really glad to hear that, you know, Oak has taken them, you know, 90% of the way on a journey that is hugely time-consuming. And as you said, we do have a tendency to reinvent the wheel in education. And so, it sounds like it's been really positive in terms of workload, in terms of high quality, and in terms of also leaving space for that autonomy and that professional judgment localization piece that we talked about earlier.

Lift Firth Park

One school already seeing the benefits is Lift Firth Park, a mixed secondary school in Sheffield serving a community with high levels of disadvantage. Around 54% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, more than double the national average. The school also has high pupil mobility and a significant proportion of pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

The challengeInconsistencies in curriculum delivery

Before adopting Oak's Spanish curriculum for key stage 3, the MFL department faced inconsistencies in curriculum delivery. Differences in teachers' subject knowledge and experience meant classes weren't always covering the same content at the same pace.

Teachers were also spending significant time creating and adapting resources, particularly to support colleagues with less specialist expertise.

At the same time, many pupils lacked confidence speaking Spanish in lessons.

Hayley Martin, Director of Learning and MFL at Lift Firth Park, has started to notice the impact Oak is having for both teachers and pupils.

The impactPupil confidence and teaching consistency

Greater confidence speaking Spanish

The most immediate change has been in pupils' willingness to speak Spanish.

Where pupils were once reluctant to answer aloud, teachers are now seeing them verbalise vocabulary with confidence, read sentences together and practise spoken Spanish as part of everyday classroom routines.

Hayley attributes much of this change to Oak's explicit teaching of phonics alongside its carefully sequenced curriculum.

"Oak has high expectations of all pupils. Because Oak chunks and interleaves knowledge, it is accessible to all pupils."

Although the pilot is still in its early stages, Hayley hopes that greater confidence at key stage 3 will encourage more pupils to continue studying Spanish at GCSE.

More consistent teaching across the department

Oak has also helped create much greater teaching consistency across key stage 3.

Teachers now have a shared curriculum and clear sequence of learning, meaning pupils receive a more consistent experience regardless of who teaches them.

For Hayley, this is evident when reviewing pupils' work.

"Teachers know exactly where they should be, and when I look in books I can see everyone is following a consistent scheme of work."

The shared curriculum has also reduced the need for teachers to create large amounts of new material from scratch, allowing them to focus their time on adapting lessons to meet the needs of their pupils.

Hayley encourages colleagues to see Oak as a foundation rather than a script, telling them"this is a skeleton that we can adapt. Let's have some ownership over it as well."

Advice for other schools

Hayley is now supporting another Lift school, Lift Clacton, to introduce Oak's MFL curriculum.

Her advice to schools considering Oak is to fully commit to the implementation while giving teachers confidence to adapt resources for their own context.

"Go for it. It is a big change, but you need to be all in and try it. Make it clear that you can adapt it to suit your pupils. It will take time, but there is lots of support to help you. Allow it time so you can see progress."