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We are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2025 ��ɫ���� Public Engagement and Impact Award is the Digital Empowerment in Language Teaching (DELTEA) project, a partnership between University of Southampton and University of Reading. This outstanding project demonstrates the transformative power of research and meaningful public engagement in revitalising languages education through digital innovation.

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DELTEA addressed the urgent challenge of low status of foreign languages in UK primary schools, offering an, evidence-based approach that simultaneously supports teachers and pupils. The project deliversed a research-informed digital professional development (DPD) programme for teachers, a linked classroom intervention using multimodal digital stories and a phonics-AI app, and a scalable MOOC plus toolkit to support sustainable, wide-scale adoption of best practice across the UK and beyond.

Key Achievements & Impact

• Empowering teachers: Teachers who completed the DPD programme reported significant increases in autonomy, competence and motivation — gaining confidence in teaching literacy, creativity, and intercultural understanding, and feeling part of a renewed professional community.

• Transforming learning: Over 500 pupils in intervention schools — compared with control schools — showed statistically significant improvements in vocabulary, reading comprehension, creativity, phonological decoding, and general engagement. The approach proved inclusive, with no disadvantage observed for EAL or SEND pupils.

• Wider reach and influence: DELTEA’s work informed national policy discussion, including evidence contribution to the APPG Education “Loss of the Love of Learning (LoLoL)” report and presentation of findings to the Department for Education’s Curriculum & Assessment team. The free MOOC has already attracted participants from 80 countries, broadening access to evidence-based foreign-language teaching, creativity and empathy-focused pedagogy.

• Sustained public engagement: DELTEA embedded public engagement: teachers co-designed the intervention, contributed to MOOC content, and helped refine resources; pupils provided feedback on learning and resource design; and findings were shared through blogs, webinars, CPD sessions, conferences, and public-facing articles, creating two-way dialogue between researchers, educators, learners and policymakers.

• You can find out more at

Watch this space for a featured article on DELTEA in ��ɫ���� Research Intelligence, outlining the project in full detail and sharing the voices of teachers, pupils and stakeholders.