Schools: Foreign Languages

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am delighted to answer my noble friend’s question. We have increased the bursary available to people with a first class degree in, for instance, languages, to £25,000. We are providing £2 million to fund nine projects across the country that will help primary and secondary teachers teach the new modern language curriculum at key stages 2 and 3. The National College for Teaching and Leadership facilitates an expert group for languages and also has a pilot scheme for subject enhancement in primary schools.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that it is the quality of foreign language teaching, particularly in primary schools, that remains a key challenge? I note what he has just said, but that teaching has been characterised by some as being “rusty O-level” and only a page or two ahead of the children. We all support the idea of extending foreign language teaching to primary schools, but it should not be at the expense of quality. Given what the Minister said, is he satisfied that enough extra resources are being put in to make that kind of teaching a distant memory?

[Lord Nash]

We believe that they are, but obviously we will keep this matter under review. We do feel that we need to redress the situation in languages. The European Survey on Language Competences in 2012 showed us that our 2011 GCSE students were the worst at languages across all the countries surveyed.