Last updated 19:48, Thursday, 09 October 2008

COCKERMOUTH School has been awarded specialist status in a third subject.

The school was successful in its application to have modern languages as a specialist subject, in addition to maths and computing.

Steve Milledge, head of specialism at the school, said: “It is an important achievement for the school and we are aiming to do more for the students particularly in the languages.

“It is bucking the national trend and we have a very healthy number of students taking modern languages up to A-level.”

The school has successful school exchanges with Cockermouth’s twin town Marjevols and a school at Brake in Germany.

Helen Raftery, 18, and James Tiffin, 17, both take French and German at A-level and felt they had learned a lot from the exchanges.

Helen said: “It helps when you are constantly communicating with people in different languages and you learn so much about the different culture as well.”

David Elliott, head of modern languages, said: “The department is very strong. We hope that in three years 90 per cent of our pupils will be taking a modern language.”

The school hopes to extend the range of languages on offer and is now offering Spanish at sixth form level in addition to French and German.

It is also looking into the possibility of students studying Polish and Japanese.

Headteacher Stuart Reeves said: “There is an important community aspect to securing of specialist status for modern languages. We want to provide a link between ourselves and local businesses as this has the potential to help the tourist industry as well.”