STRAIGHT-TALKING was off the timetable for Year 9 pupils at Ely s King s School when they took lessons in Tahitian, Finnish, Hungarian and even Afrikaans. Religious studies and food technology were delivered in French, they learnt music in German, drama i

STRAIGHT-TALKING was off the timetable for Year 9 pupils at Ely's King's School when they took lessons in Tahitian, Finnish, Hungarian and even Afrikaans.

Religious studies and food technology were delivered in French, they learnt music in German, drama in Latin and sport in Afrikaans.

The school's head of spanish, Margarita Payeras Cifre offer ed beginners' Tahitian, a language based on French, and there were even beginners' classes in sign language.

Russian and Japanese will also be on offer as part of the programme designed to encourage students not only to practice languages with which they are already familiar but to introduce them to other languages which they might not get the chance to experience.

King's senior school's head of modern languages, Ruth Crabtree, said: "It's designed to fire their interest in language and to encourage them to be confident communicators.

"We are fortunate to have native Finnish, Hungarian, Spanish and Afrikaans speakers on the staff and I am grateful to them all for the contribution they made to the day.