Careers Education for Students

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lady Bull on her excellent and inspiring maiden speech. In declaring my interest as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages, I want to use my contribution to this important debate to highlight the specific need for careers education and advice to convey the enormous and increasing value of language skills to school leavers and graduates as they make their career choices. This advice must also start early enough for school students to have the opportunity to choose one or more foreign languages among their GCSE options. This means getting focused and well-informed advice during or before year 9—before option choice deadlines kick in, as the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, pointed out.

The other element of this debate which I want to stress is the reference to all students. It is often wrongly assumed that studying foreign languages is just for the brightest students, but I will show how beneficial they can be for anyone, at whatever level, and how better integration of language learning throughout all stages of education could have a game-changing impact on social mobility.

Languages can be the gateway to wider career choices, either as a specialist linguist or in any other role where an ability to communicate in another language is an asset. Foreign language skills are in use in practically every sector in the economy, with higher than average demand in the financial services, IT and telecommunications, passenger transport, fashion and design and hotel and catering industries. They are in use at all levels in the workforce, not just senior management. In fact, the greatest skills gaps are among administrative and clerical staff, and those working at elementary grades. All that is before we even mention the need for languages and linguists in diplomacy, defence and security.

Lack of language skills in the UK workforce is costing the economy £48 billion a year, or 3.5% of GDP. Yet only 36% of business leaders say they are satisfied with school leavers’ language abilities, and the British chambers of commerce say that the UK’s languages deficit is adversely affecting our ability to build export growth. As many as 96% of the companies they surveyed said they had no foreign language capacity. In the British Academy’s Born Global research, companies spelled out that lack of language skills creates operational problems, including client dissatisfaction and supply chain difficulties.

Google Translate can help only up to a point. Human beings, not algorithms, are needed to communicate accurately, fully sympathetically and creatively. In the light of all that, I warmly welcome and applaud Her Majesty’s Government’s recent investment of £4.8 million in the new MFL hubs to boost language skills and the number of linguists. I would appreciate some further information from the Minister on how the effectiveness of these hubs will be monitored and assessed. For example, will they be required to have formal links with the careers hubs that we heard about from my noble friend Lord Aberdare and others?

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages has heard evidence from employers who are unable to fill graduate posts because of a lack of language skills, and they are resorting increasingly to overseas recruitment to meet their needs. Even for the specialists, the supply chain is shrinking dangerously. There are now fewer MFL graduates than there are vacant posts in secondary schools. Yet, with the extremely attractive language teacher training scholarships of £27,500 now available, teaching is a very strong career option for an ambitious languages graduate.

Employers more generally have consistently said how much they value graduates who have had some international and cross-cultural experience, usually by taking a year abroad as part of their degree course, which is an option not only for linguists but for all students. This underlines how important it is that the UK remains a full participating member of the Erasmus+ programme after Brexit, and I should be grateful if the Minister could update the House on where the Government currently are on this vital detail of the Brexit negotiations, which will undoubtedly have an impact on the future employability of our young people. Research has shown that Erasmus students are 23% less likely to face unemployment than those who have not taken a year abroad.

It is also important that we reverse the current trend for foreign language skills to become the preserve of a privileged educational elite. Languages up to age 16 are compulsory in 70% of independent schools but in only 16% of state schools. Despite the incentive of the EBacc, a worrying number of schools are now shrinking key stage 3 into two years, with the result that more and more children in the state sector are denied the benefits of compulsory language teaching after the age of only 13.

The White Paper earlier this year on the industrial strategy recognised regional disparities in the UK’s skills base. Low take-up in foreign languages correlates with regions of poor productivity and low skill levels overall. For example, in the north-east in 2016, only 43% of pupils sat a GCSE in a language, compared with 65% in inner London, and this gap has been widening year on year. We also need Her Majesty’s Government to build languages into their plans for technical education. The National Retraining Scheme for targeting skills shortages is welcome; can the Minister say whether modern foreign languages could be considered as a skill shortage in the next phase of this scheme?

One route to mobility is the language industry itself—I do not mean just interpreters, translators and teachers, but researchers, people who write textbooks, apps, CDs and websites, people who do subtitling and dubbing for films and TV and all manner of other experts. It is estimated that this industry is worth over €20 billion across the EU and has a very high growth rate. As an English-speaking nation, we are uniquely well placed to take strategic advantage of this expected further growth, not only in Europe but worldwide. I hope that our careers service and careers advisers would regard it as part of their responsibility to ensure that our young people get their fair share of the prosperity on offer in this sector. I am also aware of a proposal for a sector deal for the tourism industry, which acknowledges that language skills are vital for increasing the value of inbound tourism and hospitality. Specifically, it says that,

“language skills are an essential business requirement and a significant element of providing good customer service”.

Whether they have sights on being a highly skilled and trained interpreter for the UN, or a hotel receptionist whose work can be greatly enhanced by a conversational ability in another language, all our students, at school and university, deserve to be better informed and better equipped to function as successful members of society in a global labour market and in a country which aspires to leadership in international trade, defence and diplomacy. This means acknowledging that, in the 21st century, speaking only English is as much of a disadvantage as speaking no English. Our careers services and advisers must reflect this and encourage all students to seize the opportunities that an ability to use another language will certainly give them.