Business Language Champions Awards recognise outstanding achievement

This week sees the launch of CILT’s Business Language Champions Awards programme, a unique initiative that recognises and celebrates businesses who are supporting language learning in schools across the UK.

As CILT’s new Agenda for languages has highlighted, language skills are becoming increasingly important for businesses wanting to compete in a global economy. Indeed, the latest CBI skills survey showed that 74% of UK employers are looking for conversational language skills. This is a message that needs to reach young people, and the Business Language Champion Awards programme will reward businesses who are enabling this to happen.

The Awards are aimed at companies or individuals from business who have successfully raised the ambitions and horizons of young people by helping them to realise the importance of languages in a work context, and in doing so, have increased the take up of languages at schools and colleges in the area.  CILT’s Employer Engagement Adviser, Michelle Brassell said: “Many businesses are giving their time and resources to support young people to help them see how learning languages can benefit them in their future career.  These awards recognise those businesses and individuals who have shown innovation and commitment to working with young people through languages”.

Businesses who choose to nominate themselves could have done this in any number of ways; through speaking to schools about how languages are used within their company, sharing authentic resources in target languages, working with teachers to develop business-related projects using languages, setting language challenges for young people or hosting student and teacher visits to their offices to see languages in action.

Many of CILT’s own Business Language Champions have already developed some highly successful partnerships with schools across the UK. These new awards aim to encourage more businesses to do the same, and to celebrate and thank those that already are.

There will be three categories in this year’s Business Language Champions Awards: ‘Outstanding Commitment’, ‘Innovation’ and ‘Individual Business Ambassador’. Businesses can apply by downloading an information pack and application form from the CILT website.