On Wednesday 1st October, a selected group of high achieving Y9 pupils took part in a language outreach session with GCHQ, one of the UK’s main intelligence agencies. We had two speakers who work as language analysts at GCHQ, who explained to us what they do and why languages are so important to them. We looked at the different types of crimes they help to prevent, as well as the various agencies they work with to help keep the country safe. The pupils were then tasked with a challenge to use their French skills as well as their logic and problem-solving skills to analyse intelligence to prevent a large shipment of drugs arriving in the UK. They had to understand and use the Caesar cipher to intercept a series of texts between the two drug smugglers, as well as translate the decoded messages into English to work out where and when the shipment was due to arrive. They then had to draft a report to send to the National Crime Agency, all typical of a language analyst’s day to day work. The feedback from the pupils was really positive, they described the session as “fun and interesting” and that “it made me really proud of my French that I could work out the messages”. One of them even left saying “It really made me think about job opportunities at GCHQ” so we could perhaps have the next generation of language analysts with us!
