Languages promoted at High School

Young people from Blairgowrie High School had the opportunity to engage with local businesses at an event held in the school earlier this month.

S2 and S3 students heard from a range of local business leaders who view language skills as key to the growth and success of their company. The event demonstrated the relevance of language skills in a work context and aimed to encourage pupils to continue with their language studies into the senior phase of their secondary education, and beyond school.

The event was organised by Blairgowrie High School’s modern languages department with support from SCILT, Scotland’s National Centre for Languages, working in partnership with local businesses. Companies attending includedVisitScotland.

Andrew Cunningham, learning and organisational development manager at VisitScotland and one of the workshop leaders, said:“It was a pleasure and an honour to speak to such an enthusiastic group of young people.

“At VisitScotland we engage with secondary schools, colleges and universities to inspire students around the country to think about tourism as a positive career choice, with a specific emphasis on the importance of language skills.

“It is always uplifting to see young people keen to participate in our industry and it’s also wonderful to see them‘join up the dots’– connecting the skills and knowledge they are learning in school to the real-life world of work.”

Fhiona Fisher, director of SCILT added: “Events such as these are a really important way of providing young people with high quality careers advice delivered by the business people themselves and of demonstrating to them the value of language skills in our increasingly globalised world.”

One of the young people involved in the event commented:“It gave me a new perspective on languages and showed me how useful languages are for getting a job.”

And one of the teachers described the session as“informative and motivational”.