The project has been subject to external evaluation since it began in 2015. This has helped the project to grow and improve. Increasingly, these evaluations have helped us to understand the nuances of the diverse challenges facing languages across Wales and has supported the project to diversify to support our language communities.
Beginning in 2015 the MFL Student Mentoring Project has partnered with schools across Wales and provided the opportunity for partnerships between schools and university. Two consecutive evaluation reports demonstrate that this project has had a positive impact on the numbers of young people intending to take MFL at GCSE (Tinsley, 2017; 2018). Quality of the project has been maintained during a period of significant growth as is seen in the consistent positive impact. This positive impact has been maintained as the project has grown in size to work with over 100 schools, showing the infrastructure and the approach of the project can be consistently applied as the number of schools supported grows.
MFL Mentoring 2015-2020 Evaluation, by Dr Lizzie Rushton and Laura Thomas of Ondata Research Limited 2020
The benefits of participating extend to mentors and those recruited by MFL Mentoring are motivated to share their own experiences and interests in languages. This ensures close alignment with the ethos of the project, undoubtedly contributing to the successful delivery in schools (Rushton & Thomas 2020). Mentors also express a sense of pride in their achievements in “promoting the importance of languages in broadening global and career horizons” (Blake and Gorrara 2019).
MFL Mentoring School Case Studies 2022, by Laura Thomas of Ondata Research Limited