The teacher and school-led programmes are being organised in order to support the new languages curriculum, which came into effect this term.
There are nine projects in total and the aim is to support more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools over the next two years.
The projects are based in Warrington, Reading, Warwick, Winchester, Cornwall, Birmingham, Gloucestershire, and Leicester. A ninth will work across a number of schools in the North East, East of England and North Midlands.
From this term, primary schools are now required to teach languages at key stage 2 and a majority of the projects will feature collaborative work between primaries and secondaries.
The funding has come from the Department for Education (DfE) and was unveiled by education secretary Nicky Morgan last week.
A DfE statement said: “The projects will be focused on supporting teachers with the elements of the new curriculum that may be more challenging.
“These include the use of more spontaneous speaking and writing, grammar, translation and the introduction of literary texts in a foreign language at key stage 3.”
Each project is to now work with schools to “identify the areas where teachers have said they would like further support”.
Within the new languages curriculum at secondary level, students are expected to hold more challenging conversations in a foreign language and translate into the foreign language. There is also a new requirement to read and study literary texts such as stories, songs, poems and letters in language.
Among the schemes given funding, the Association for Language Learning has received £300,000 to work with 500 schools across the North East, East of England and North Midlands, including setting up 10 “local centres” within Teaching Schools to support teachers across the regions.
The University of Gloucestershire, meanwhile, has received £265,000 to provide training to teachers in 100 primary and 25 secondary schools.
And Rushey Mead School in Leicester has been given £240,000 to work with five other Teaching School Alliances to support more than 150 primary and secondary schools, with a focus on phonology, grammar and assessment.