Modern Languages in Schools Prize

The Department of Languages and Cultures has been running a very successful Schools Essay Prize Competition for a number of years.

In addition to our usual two competitions, which will start again in September 2023, there will also be a brand new one. Watch this space, with more information to come soon.

The results of this year's Modern Languages in Schools Prize 2022-2023 were revealed in an online ceremony on June 21st.

Once again, we were stunned by the response to the competition this year with schools from all over the UK entering the A-level prize or the GCSE-level prize. Apart from thanking all the students for their hard work, we would also like to thank all the teachers and staff who helped make this year’s Prize possible, including by running internal competitions. Above all, we hope that the Schools Prize has provided an opportunity for all the students who took part in some way to have fun whilst practicing their languages.

Our judges were extremely impressed by the quality of the entries and they commented on how much they enjoyed reading the A-level students’ essays as well as watching the GCSE-level students’ video presentations. It has been exciting and inspiring to see such a passion and ability for language learning, and we hope that these students will continue to study languages and cultures at a higher education level. We believe that all the participants should feel very proud of themselves.

It was a very competitive field, and all the winners and runners-up deserve congratulations and praise for their linguistic talent. So fierce was the competition that we could not rank three entries and all three were awarded the runner-up position.

A-level Prize Results

Overall winner for an essay in French:
Poppy Breeze from Wycombe Abbey

Runner-up for an entry in Spanish:
Eliza Nicholson from Peter Symonds

Runner-up for an entry in Chinese:
Hannah edge from Westholme

Runner-up for an entry in German:
Marlena van der Ploeg from Westminster

GCSE Prize Results

For this competition aimed at KS3 students, the entries could be made in the target language or in English and we could not determine one winner overall as the competition level was so high…we have two winners. Congratulation to all participants for such amazing and entertaining videos.

Winners for the KS3 video competition:

Serena Derby from Repton School in Derbyshire

Lily Tattersall from Hyndburn Academy in Blackburn

For more information on the Competition, please contact the Department of Languages and Cultures via email: languagesessayprize@lancaster.ac.uk