celebrating our multilingual school community

As we were delighted to share yesterday, this week we marked European Day of Languages by inviting staff and students to showcase their multilingual skills and second or third language knowledge around school and in class.

Today, Head of Languages Mr Bridge organised a special whole school assembly to celebrate European Day of Languages and its theme for this year, Peace, fantastically supported by student ambassadors from Year 7 who were keen to share the impressive range of languages that they are able to speak.

They are pictured above with Year 8s Austin and Evan, who spoke about their involvement in extracurricular Languages Club, and the many rewards of getting involved.

As Mr Bridge shared, at UGS we are proud to be a multilingual school community, and 270 of our students speak additional languages at home. In total, an amazing 43 different languages are spoken by our students, and it was fantastic to be treated to a showcase of this in the Assembly by our Year 7 ambassadors:

Afreen: Malayalam

Charmaine: Cantonese

Hasti: Persian

Humeyra: Turkish

Dana: Arabic

Hashim: Tamil

Ibrahim: German

Isaac: Portuguese

Jeremy: Polish

Inayah: Pashto

Aditi: Hindu

Ziad: Hindi

Mr Bridge and the ambassadors discussed the many enriching personal, academic and professional benefits and rewards of language learning, and how embracing this chimes with our UGS ethos of student development and progression, and further enables our students to engage with and to demonstrate our core values of Pride, Participation and Empathy.

Mr Bridge also alerted the students to the many language enrichment and extracurricular opportunities that will be available to them moving forward, including Italian Club, Languages Film Club, and Spanish Club; in addition to the chance to take part in internal and external competitions, including the Oxford University Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, which Mrs Chadwick will be leading sessions on in the near future.

As Mr Bridge concluded, in sentiments that were reiterated by Mrs Wall to the students, the willingness to learn and the capacity to speak another shared language not only develops and enriches a multitude of character traits that will serve our students well both in learning and in life, but is a glorious way of compounding a sense of community and togetherness, something which we at UGS pride ourselves on enormously.

With huge thanks to Mr Bridge, the MFL department and our amazing student ambassadors for a wonderful celebration of European Day of Languages, and a fantastic way to end another week at UGS.