Y7 Language Choices for September 2025

Modern Foreign Languages at the Academy

At SMMA, we are extremely fortunate to be able to offer four languages from the start of your child’s journey in secondary school. Classes will be evenly sized and pupils will be allocated a language set based on your expressed preferences in the online form. If you have a compelling reason why your child should be placed in a particular language class, please make a note on the online form. Please understand we are unable to guarantee a particular language, though we will do our best to meet your preference. Finally, if your child is already a capable or fluent speaker of one of our European languages, you should not select that language as their preferred language.

There is also the opportunity to take Mandarin as the core language under the Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP). This language option will be offered to the top 30 performers in the year group who have been admitted to the school under any criteria should they rank highly enough in the assessments. Again, please indicate this on the online form. If any of the top 30 decline the MEP place, then places are offered in rank order.

More about the Mandarin Excellence Programme

In 2016, the Academy was chosen to be a lead school within the Mandarin Excellence Programme (a Government flagship programme). This means that we are being funded to develop the teaching of Mandarin further and to encourage outstanding students with an aptitude for Mandarin to join this national programme. They will study the language to an advanced level with the aim of producing 5,000 students on track towards fluency.

 

This is an intensive programme (because of the aspirations for the outcomes) and requires the following commitment:

• Mandarin will be the core Modern Foreign Language with an expectation to study through to at least GCSE level.
• Attendance to additional lessons which take place before and after school; the number of which depends on the year group and the timetable.
• Additional ‘blended study’ (personal & interactive learning) averaging a further four hours a week over the year.

Your child will not be taking a European language in Years 7, 8 and 9, but will have the option of selecting a European language as an additional GCSE option to start in Year 10 should they have sufficient aptitude to do so ab initio.

Please complete the online form  Language Choice at SMMA as soon as possible and let us know your child’s rank order of preferences in European languages (in the event your child is not taking up the offer of the Mandarin Excellence Programme or if they do not score highly enough to do so).

Yours faithfully

Ms Lorena Ferrandis-Garcia
Curriculum Leader: Modern Foreign Languages