NCELP – National Centre for Excellence for Language Pedagogy

About us

We work in partnership with university researchers, teacher educators and expert practitioners, and with 18 Specialist Teachers in nine Leading Schools across the country acting as language hubs, to improve language curriculum design and pedagogy.

Modern Foreign Language Pedagogy

The Centre is funded by the Department for Education (DfE) to take forward the recommendations of the ‘Review of MFL Pedagogy’ and support their implementation in schools.

Language Hubs

We drive, support, and monitor the work of a national collaborative network of Modern Foreign Language teachers and their schools to raise the standards of language teaching through the sharing of resources and good practice.

18 Oct

Hawkes presents at ALL Primary Languages Conference 2020

Rachel Hawkes presented ‘Strengthening the pillar of grammar (Grammar @KS2)’ at the Association for Language Learning (ALL) Primary Languages Conference 2020, on Saturday 17 October 2020. Rachel talked about how...

14 Oct

Successful NCELP research CPD day

Today we held a one-day research CPD event for NCELP Specialist Teachers (from our Lead Schools). The aims of the day were for teachers: To feel more confident about distinguishing...

9 Oct

Registration open for NCELP Online Conference on 20 Nov 2020

We’re hosting ‘An introduction to NCELP’ online conference on Friday 20 November, 09:30-15:30. You will be able to join language teachers from all over the country to learn about NCELP’s...

8 Oct

Hawkes and Marsden present at National MFL (Inside Gov) Conference – 7 Oct 20

Emma Marsden and Rachel Hawkes, NCELP Director and Co-Director respectively, presented at the Inside Government National Modern Foreign Languages Conference 2020 on 7 October 2020. Emma’s keynote gave a snapshot...

7 Oct

NCELP approaches to teaching and learning during COVID-19

With some students in school, some students self-isolating at home, occasionally more significant local school lockdown or partial lockdown, it’s key that teachers have effective ways to set work for...

5 Oct

NCELP/Anthony present paper at JAECS

Laurence Anthony (Waseda University) and members of the NCELP team – Natalie Finlayson, Emma Marsden, Rachel Hawkes and Nick Avery – presented the paper: ‘Extending vocabulary profiling to languages other...

Coronavirus (COVID-19)