Higher Education: EUC Report

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins]

My Lords, I shall focus on what the report says about student mobility in relation to the Erasmus scheme and the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages. I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages and vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

I warmly welcome the committee’s conclusions on the importance of the Erasmus scheme: in particular, that the fee waiver should be retained to encourage participation and not deter students who may already be finding university fees a bit of a stretch. There is already early evidence that recruitment to modern language degree courses, which of course are four-year courses, has been adversely affected by fee increases. It seems that by no means all Russell Group university language departments have succeeded in recruiting to target this year and that at least three of them have recruited so badly that degree programmes are likely to close. In that light, the recent settlement agreed with the Government for study and work abroad was most welcome, minimising disincentives to outgoing UK student mobility for both students and their home universities.

The UK benefit from the Erasmus scheme is still very much one way. We benefit from the enrichment to students and university life provided by incoming students but, sadly, three times as many students from Germany, France and Spain take the opportunity to study abroad as their British peers. In 2009-10, we had 406,000 foreign students here, but only 33,000 UK students were abroad. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who said that universities themselves should be doing much more about this. They should encourage all students, not just the linguists, to know about and take advantage of the Erasmus scheme.

The committee suggests—and it is right—that the language deficit among our students is a major factor in the UK’s inability to benefit fully from Erasmus. The significant increase in funding from 2014 to 2020 will remain untapped by the UK unless we can produce greater numbers of linguistically confident and competent students in HE, whether they are studying modern languages or not. I wish that more universities would follow the example of UCL and insist that all applicants, irrespective of subject, should have a GCSE or equivalent in a foreign language—or that if they do not, should undertake to study one during their first year. This is surely the right approach for a modern university with an international perspective and awareness. No graduate should be a monoglot, even if their one language is English. Most continental universities ensure that all their graduates have two or three languages to a decent level.

I take slight issue with the committee for saying that the evidence for the benefits of student mobility on employability is still anecdotal. The British Academy’s report, Valuing the Year Abroad, which was also published in March this year, set out some robust evidence for the link between mobility and employability and is just the latest evidence that one might quote. Various employer and business surveys have shown for years how much employers value languages. Over 70% of UK employers say that they are not happy with the language skills of UK graduates and are being forced increasingly to recruit from overseas to meet their needs. This applies to business in all sectors. We are damaging both the economic competitiveness of the UK and the employment chances of young people in a global labour market if we allow this language deficit to continue.

The committee also asserts that English is the dominant language in the academic world and in EU institutions. However, I believe that that is a great oversimplification and that where it is the case it will not necessarily remain so. It is short-sighted to believe that English is enough. One interesting indicator is the language of the internet. The fact is that content on the internet in English is declining rapidly, from over 50% in 2000 to only 29% in 2009. In the same period, content in Mandarin or Cantonese quadrupled and continues to rise rapidly, particularly in the field of scientific research.

As far as EU institutions are concerned, there is an interesting paradox. The truth is that as multilingualism within the EU has grown following the expansion of member states, the need for English has also grown. This is because English is what the directorate of interpreting services calls a bridge language. You would be very hard pushed to find many people who could do simultaneous interpretation between, say, Finnish and Maltese, or between Latvian and Greek. What happens is that they go from language A to English, then English to language B. The trouble is that the UK is not producing enough language graduates to meet the need, either in the EU or in the United Nations and other institutions. Meetings in all of them often have to be cancelled because there simply are not enough people in the language services who are English native speakers and able to work in other languages. This is not doing a lot for our reputation as a nation in these institutions, and is why the committee whose report we are debating was so imaginatively right to recommend that languages should be compulsory in both primary and secondary schools. Without this, the HE sector will not have the raw material to maintain and develop its language teaching and learning.

We desperately need not just more specialist linguists but more economists, geographers, scientists and others who can also handle themselves in at least one other language—as graduates from the US, China, India and most of the rest of the EU already can. As the committee’s report says, this goes back to the need for better language teaching in schools. I am delighted that the Government have made such a strong case recently for the introduction of compulsory languages in primary schools from 2014. This will be an important step in addressing our national languages deficit, but only one small step, insufficient alone to secure the higher standards of achievement that we need to see. The arguments that the Government themselves have made in relation to primary education, in terms of European and global comparability, apply equally to key stage 4. International research shows that an early start to language learning is not a panacea; it needs continuity through to secondary school. In my view, compulsory languages up to key stage 4 should also be a part of the Government’s curriculum review. Just making them compulsory is not enough in itself, of course; we also need radical improvements to the syllabus and to teaching methods, especially the emphasis on spoken language, which, as both Ofsted and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, have pointed out, is not nearly good enough.

The EBacc has had a positive effect, which is very welcome, but on only 54% of state schools. The other 46% have said that they will not be changing or improving a thing about their language offer as a result of the EBacc. We must stop the current trend of languages becoming an elitist subject and university language departments being dominated by students from the independent schools because fewer and fewer state school-leavers are actually qualified to apply for those courses. Without compulsory languages at key stage 4, we are unlikely to be successful in exploiting the opportunities provided by the Erasmus scheme to enable young British people to achieve their potential.

It is important to point out that languages for all up to key stage 4 does not necessarily mean forcing every child to do a GCSE. There are several other ways of accrediting language learning, not least the language NVQ, which is highly favoured by business. Will the Minister assure me that the question of languages for all at key stage 4 is still under active consideration, and does she agree that there is a strong case to be argued?

Given the cross-departmental relevance of all the aspects of modern foreign languages that I have touched on, not just for BIS but for the DfE and the Treasury, not to mention for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, does the Minister agree that it would make sense to designate a Minister with cross-cutting responsibility for languages policy so that the interconnectedness between these sectors, from primary schools through to a competitive economy, could be properly made and monitored and better served by coherent policy?