Record-breaking Junior Language Challenge 2017 for primary schools raises £10,000 for charity

The Junior Language Challenge, uTalk’s annual language competition for primary school children, has raised £10,000 for educational charity onebillion, doubling last year’s total – and we’re hoping to go even higher!

The competition offers children aged 10 and under across the UK the chance to learn up to three new languages, starting this year with French. They’ll have until June 23rd to play the games in uTalk’s fun language app and score as many points as they can, then top scorers from each region of the UK will go through to round 2 and live semi-finals in September, with the winners progressing to October’s grand final in London.

Entry costs £5, which is donated to uTalk’s sister charity, onebillion, who are bringing transformational learning to children in some of the world’s poorest countries. The JLC champion will win a family holiday to Africa, where they’ll have the opportunity to visit a onebillion project and see for themselves what their money’s helping to achieve. 2016 winner, 10-year-old Ritisha Baidyaray from Birmingham, is looking forward to visiting Malawi with her family this summer.

onebillion director Jamie Stuart said, “At onebillion we’re thrilled to hear about the record number of JLC learners – not only because of the substantial donation to support our work for marginalised children, but also because we know from past years that the JLC is an amazing and fun experience for each of the children taking part in the competition.”

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Jane Birtwistle from Bury, near Manchester, is taking part in the JLC for the first time, and is delighted with both the opportunity for her students to learn French, and their enthusiasm for the competition: “As a primary French specialist teacher who firmly believes in the importance of inspiring a love of languages at a young age, I was thrilled to discover the JLC for the first time this year.

My pupils are thoroughly enjoying the competition so far. It’s creating a real buzz around the school community and the leaderboard brings a competitive element which fuels their independent learning.”

Registration is still open for the Junior Language Challenge 2017. Children can sign up as part of a school group or as individuals to receive their login details for the competition.