Entire Annual Report (2) - Flipbook - Page 8
Director Review
Anticipating change, monitoring change, adapting to change quickly, enjoying the change, and looking forward
to more change in the future are all things that PPLI as an organisation has become familiar with on this journey
through the pandemic. Many of the changes have been positive and have accelerated progress towards realizing
the implementation of Languages Connect – Ireland’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education. Challenges
that presented themselves in 2021 led to further new opportunities and projects.
The team have continued to demonstrate huge resilience during this time. Last year I wrote that the changes
they had to respond to in 2020 were unprecedented but 2021 brought with it even more changes and challenges.
In addition to all the regular projects and activities, which the team had already worked hard to reimagine and
reconfigure in response to the new pandemic context, in 2021 PPLI provided 1700 students of the non-curricular
languages with accredited grades for Leaving Certificate, worked with 300 post-primary schools to facilitate oral
interviews for Leaving Certificate in Italian, Japanese and Russian, provided accredited grades for our own
Saturday class students, and devised and implemented the new ‘Say Yes to Languages’, primary languages sampler
module in 500 primary schools for 40,000 pupils.
These additional projects increased the workload but provided opportunities for new links and connections with
stakeholders and schools. As a result of ongoing successful delivery of the work, the team demonstrated that
flexibility is key in having been able to respond to what were significant demands. The circumstances also
improved outcomes in the context of many projects. As just one example, the scale of #ThinkLanguages which
originally pivoted from a central venue and focus into a series of local events with online input, increased again.
In 2021 150 schools participated with 12,000 students participating which is a 400% increase on the number of
students that were able to participate the last time a central venue provided the focus.
The pandemic encouraged a new openness to alternative pathways for teaching and learning in PPLI as
elsewhere. Acceptance of change has been necessary, the existing status quo has been broken down, accelerating
the introduction of new modes of provision. This has enabled us to increase access via blended learning and
online provision to the new Leaving Certificate languages curricula for students who do not have access to the
curriculum in schools. All teachers participating in these projects have received extensive training on different
aspects of blended language classes related to teaching and learning which has contributed significantly to their
pathway of professional development.
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- PPLI ANNUAL REPORT 2021 -