The Language College is an integral part of Hillcrest, a mixed community comprehensive school in Hastings, East Sussex. As a DfES designated specialist school for Modern Languages, the major focus of our work is delivering this aspect of the curriculum within the school, but beyond that we also contribute to teaching additional language courses for both young people and adults in our community, to working with business partners and English Language Schools in our area, to teaching in Primary Schools and to providing continuing professional development and other training opportunities for new and experienced language teachers. We are involved in organising trips, educational visits and work experience for students in the Hastings area, and we also co-ordinate requests for translation and interpreting work.
At Hillcrest we place a great emphasis on the international dimension to the curriculum and on global citizenship. Our status as a specialist language college allows us to develop this area throughout our work in all subjects taught at the school. We are constantly striving to develop extra language learning opportunities for all our students and for the wider community as a whole, and to foster links with schools and other groups abroad.
The Language College is a self-contained building located behind the main school. We are lucky to enjoy excellent facilities, with interactive whiteboards in all our seven classrooms and a multimedia suite which was completed in 2004. Our resources allow our students to enjoy a positive and motivating learning experience, and while we are delighted to be able to use a range of modern technologies in our teaching, real person to person spoken communication still forms the basis of the major part of our work.
