Welcome to Oundle Voices, a podcast exploring the ideas shaping education and young people’s lives today.
In each episode we look beyond headlines and examination results to consider the fuller purpose of education: how we help young people become resilient, curious, ambitious and open minded, how they find belonging, and how we prepare them for a future we cannot yet fully see.
In this episode Sam Thater, Head of Modern Foreign Languages, reflects on his own journey into languages and why the subject matters now more than ever. At a time when fewer young people in the UK are choosing to study languages, he explores what sits behind that decline and what may be lost if the trend continues. The conversation considers what helps sustain interest in language learning, from the confidence and resilience it builds to the wider cultural understanding it brings. Above all, it asks why languages are about far more than vocabulary and grammar.
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