Our Lady's Preparatory School is One Step Ahead, Already Teaching Mandarin to Pupils from 3 months of age

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, announced this week that all youngsters should be given the chance to learn Mandarin at primary and secondary level to boost their appeal to potential employers.

This followed a recent survey by business leaders showing that Mandarin is the third most popular language demanded by employers, after French and German – pushing Spanish into fourth place.

Our Lady's Preparatory School in Crowthorne teaches French, Spanish and Mandarin to all pupils from 3 months old.  Mandarin was introduced in September 2009 after being identified as an ‘up and coming’ language with emerging economies such as China becoming even more important in this decade.  Pupils learn each of the three languages on a weekly basis.
Mrs Robinson, Headmistress at Our Lady’s said, “We are delighted to provide our pupils with the opportunity to learn languages. Research shows that the younger a child is exposed to foreign languages the better.  When children start learning languages at birth, they have the capacity to learn many languages at once without getting confused — because, as the brain develops, so too does the ability to separate one language from another.” Mrs Robinson continues “In addition to these benefits, it has been proven that young children who learn at least two foreign languages become more flexible and creative in their problem solving as well as reaching high levels of cognitive development at an earlier age than their monolingual peers”
For more information about languages at Our Lady’s please visit www.ourladysprepschool.co.uk, e-mail office@olps.co.uk or call 01344 773394.

Note to editor:

The “magnificent seven” languages most demanded by British employers are:
*French – sought by 52 per cent.
*German – 42 per cent.
*Mandarin/Cantonese – 38 per cent.
*Spanish – 28 per cent.
*Polish – 22 per cent.
*Russian – 21 per cent.
*Arabic – 15 per cent.

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