Putting teachers first: Our journey in supporting every primary foreign languages classroom

Primary Languages Network is a company that believes in possibility, it is passionate that every teacher in the UK should have access to resources that enable them to teach primary languages effectively.

It doesn’t accept the notion that you should settle for a solution sub-par, or out of date. It has changed its structure and solution, time and time again, in order to deliver the highest quality possible support for our schools.

The company was born with a vision 13 years ago, that learning a foreign language should be an entitlement for everyone, students and teachers alike. The benefits of learning a language far surpass just being able to speak to other people, it unlocks parts of the brain that couldn’t be accessed previously, and opens opportunity and the possibility of something greater in terms of life chances.

Our journey as a company has been one fraught with challenge, growth, doubt & frustration, but what has been created because of facing these challenges is something we are incredibly proud to share with our schools.

A DIY beginning

Janet Lloyd created Janet Lloyd Network in 2011, initially to support schools in the Warrington area with their primary languages delivery. Most people know Warrington for its IKEA, but what people may not know, it was a hot bed of primary languages teaching talent and passion.

Those who don’t know Janet, shortly after meeting her, will know her well. A larger than life character, her hair reflective of her personality, and her passion for teaching languages only a sentence or two away from being unveiled.

Although the company has changed significantly in terms of it’s product and service, what has remained deep set, is the vision provided by Janet, that we want to provide the highest quality support to schools with their primary languages.

Working with a team of teachers, and conducting local network sessions, Janet ,at the time, provided as much as she could, via book, CD rom and school visits to local coordinators and teachers, focusing on the possibilities, however small, within each school.

But, this simply wasn’t enough, the service JLN provided was limited by technology and also time, getting to schools outside of Warrington was proving tricky, the company’s chances of growth was being hindered by its processes.

 Change was required.

Along with Peter, Janet’s husband, JLN decided to improve the quality of provision. This was in the form of the virtual learning environment (VLE). The VLE enabled Janet to put all her creative ideas into a digital format, so that anybody in the UK could access them. This was a massive enhancement for the company, and made it much easier for schools to access and enjoy.

The problem was however, that although Janet’s mind is creative, it isn’t necessarily organized. The resulting product was potentially awesome, but also a logistical nightmare. Lesson plans were the length of short stories, and although it supported the super passionate languages teachers, there was still one looming question…

‘What about the non-specialists’

A question greater than time itself, well maybe not, but in the primary languages setting, possibly the most important one. The gap in teaching quality between those who can, and those who can’t is massive, and this causes huge issues within the school.

Although with the VLE we upped the accessibility of our resources, it still didn’t help the non-specialist teacher in the classroom, feeling both anxious and frustrated at the support provided.

This is where I come in.

In 2016, at this point in my life, being the son of Janet, you’d like to think I would be at least bilingual , finishing university and qualifying as a languages teacher.

Well, not really, I was a teacher, but of sport not languages. Although I had GCSEs in French and German, I never really thought I had a passion for languages.

I found learning boring, especially in secondary school, and at that time I was doing several jobs, and I started helping out part-time, to support with the demands of the company’s initial growth, mainly on the admin side of the company.

Whilst conducting several ‘click-a-thons’, I happened across the schemes of work and their resources. And although I understood what Mum (Janet) wanted the teachers to do, I thought that there is no way that I could deliver these sessions.

Having to speak a language I didn’t know whilst setting tasks and activities for the class felt like a challenge set in the latter stages of ‘The Crystal Maze’.

Simply put, I saw the schemes through the lense of the non-specialist teacher.

A difficult conversation

After a couple of years of work in the background of the company, and after a TEFL visit to Bilbao, in which I learnt intermediate Spanish for a year,  I started helping out with the training of teachers in schools.

My role was going into schools, to help them to use the resources. Some training went more successfully than others. I found it was purely dependent on the confidence of teachers, and the results of training felt short-lived, however. Inspirational and motivational, but how impactful were they really?

On a particularly cold day in London, on my way back from a training session in a school, which had gone terribly, I had a particularly difficult conversation with Janet. I had to tell her that although this scheme was her creation, it was outdated and unsupportive for non-specialist teachers.

Safe to say initially, this didn’t go down well, but after time & persuasion, we all agreed that the way forward was change, we needed to streamline resources & lesson plans. We needed to improve everything about the platform, in terms of usability for schools.

This was a mammoth job, and it took iteration after iteration, creative discussion after heated argument. Between myself, Mum and Dad, we had to reconsider everything about the company. We decided in this moment that….

Schemes of work should be designed for the type of teacher first

And in 2018, we released click2teach, a streamlined scheme for non-specialist teachers, where they could simply click on resources, and go.

This scheme ran alongside our ‘Be Creative’ scheme, which was designed for the specialist teacher, a more in-depth look at delivering languages. We focused on the concept of simplicity for non-specialists.

If I could teach it, then so could they.

This was absolutely an improvement. For the first time we heard reports from school saying their non-specialists were having a go, and trying it out. We knew that we had definitely taken steps forward, but we also knew in the back of our minds that it wasn’t sufficient and we had questions such as ‘pronunciation, accuracy and quality’ of delivery.

Then COVID struck, just as the company was having its first surge in schools. Everything changed in an instant, for everybody. The first question, that came to mind for us, was, how do we support the children’s learning at home?

In a moment of chaos came a simple solution

Thanks to the government’s late announcement, the day before schools returned after Christmas, we had to make a knee jerk decision, one that shaped PLN from that day forward. We began to record video lessons for children to access in French, Spanish .and German.

These were recorded on Zoom, were super low quality, and also very long in terms of length, however, to our surprise, we heard raving reports from parents, who had successfully delivered languages lessons to their children.

Demands for more came daily, and this started to uncover a solution that has now shaped our company, that anybody, even unqualified non-specialist teachers, were teaching languages to their children using the video lessons.

Video2Teach 1.0 was born

With this information, and on the return back to school, we had changed as a company, starting to build up the schemes of work through video lessons, team teaching for the classroom teacher whilst still providing all the vocab, pronunciation and grammar required to deliver languages accurately.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a revelation

This time our reviews back from schools were truly spectacular, true transformations. In a short period of time non-specialists that wouldn’t touch languages, were now fully “getting stuck in” and delivering languages and achieving progress.

Also, since the discovery of Zoom, Teams and Google Meet within schools, all of a sudden our training became so much more accessible, delivering all sessions virtually.

However, we produced the V2T scheme under severe time pressure, we took shortcuts on it’s quality, to ensure it was completed on time. And in the back of our minds (well, my mind!), the scheme needed work, it needed refinement.

The concept was right, the execution wasn’t

Meanwhile, Emilie & Irene, who are the French and Spanish virtual teachers. became celebrities in our network schools, with schools demanding they go visit them in person, signing autographs for children and acting like superstars on special languages days. Momentum was building, and we had discovered our answers to help the non-specialists.

Another difficult conversation

We arrive in November 2023, after we had finished our newest version of the KS1 scheme, something Emilie and Irene, had put all their heart and soul into, and I knew I had another tricky conversation to be had. After returning from the BETTs award ceremony where we had been nominated for an award, but failed to win, I knew something wasn’t right with the scheme.

‘The video2teach scheme needs work’

This, safe to say, didn’t go down well again. We had committed a whole year of life to building version 1, but it had been 3 years since it had been finished, audio on some videos wasn’t great, the videos had started to look outdated, and some lesson and module structures just weren’t perfect.

Once again, after discussion we decided as a team, what the best way was , and although we had other plans in place, we committed all of ourselves to developing Video2teach 2.0

This time though, we spent considered time designing and trialling, and we spoke to schools and coordinators, and because of this we built something that is truly brilliant.

13 years in the making

The video quality is now super high, engaging and fun. The resources are incredible and the lesson pages are simple to use. Teachers are fully supported by the videos, but also empowered “to go for it” in the lesson.

In short, schools now are absolutely loving the resources. Training is now simple to conduct and extremely effective.

This wasn’t a mistake or fortune. The newest version of Video2teach, and its accompanying Click2teach scheme is 13 years in the making. Listening to customers, improving on our weaknesses, all with our vision in mind of providing the support for every classroom teacher. We have arrived here.

We can now proudly say, that the product we offer, gives every classroom teacher the highest level of support in the classroom. The training and support we provide is also of the highest quality and efficiency for your staff.

This product has been built on the model of Janet’s vision, but has been continued and developed by a team of young expert professionals who care deeply about supporting schools with their primary languages. This is our journey as a company, and one which we are deeply proud of taking together.

And we aren’t stopping there

If you think we are stopping here, then you would be greatly mistaken. We will continue to change and improve as we see best fit, putting the customer first. You, the teachers.

Unfortunately, it will mean some other difficult conversations down the line for us, but ones we are willing to have, to ensure the highest quality product for our schools

We got here by listening, and we intend to carry on.

Become part of our network, a movement that doesn’t intend on stopping anytime soon. One ,which appreciates and embraces your feedback, and one, which will continue to pioneer the best primary languages resources & support in the UK.

Find out for yourself

If you are interested in trialling our resources, you can get access to a free trial, or click on the lessons in French, and Spanish.

We offer all the training and support your school requires to deliver high quality languages lessons, for all classroom teachers.