Education: Modern Foreign Languages

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for introducing the debate and for her ongoing commitment over many years to this subject. I think that we are making progress, but there is still a lot more to do. I accept absolutely the premise of the debate, which is that whatever happens to our relationship with the European Union, we are going to need more mastery of languages, not less.

It is now almost two decades since the Government of whom I was a member transferred the power to decide whether key stage 4 students should learn a modern foreign language from central government to head teachers. To be honest, I did not think that 16 years later we would still be in this position, and that is what I want to address today. The vision we had when making that change was not to be where we are now. It has often been seen to be a battle whether modern foreign languages should be made compulsory right through school. A lot of time and energy has been wasted on that which might have been better used to address other issues. The evidence for that is twofold. The EBaccs arrived. Given the consequences of not getting EBaccs for the school, it was almost compulsory to have modern foreign languages. Fewer than 50 per cent of students have actually taken a language. Even though we have got almost compulsory modern foreign languages in key stage 4, the drop-off at A-level is quite significant. If you look at other difficult and challenging linear subjects, such as maths, physics, the science subjects and computing, we have not seen that. We have seen either a steadying of A-level entrances, or a slight increase over recent years. I have come to the conclusion that solving this is not a battle about whether it is compulsory, it is about what we are doing in the classroom and how we are teaching modern foreign languages. One thing in the briefing that quite saddened me was that secondary school students saw the need for modern foreign languages but chose not to study them because they did not like the lessons. They were not enjoying them. That is not a criticism of the brilliant teachers who try to do their best in difficult circumstances.

My points to the Minister are that I absolutely still believe that the emphasis should still be on primary level. When you look at primary level, the lack of consistency guarantees that secondary level does not stand a chance of getting it right. In every other national curriculum subject, they link with primary. They know what they are building on. They know what the next stage is. I really like the idea of a language recovery programme. That is because it implies we are going to do something different, that we have got the determination but we are not looking back—we are learning from what is taking place.

My final comments would be: concentrate on primary level. I would make it compulsory for primary. I would not make it an entitlement. There is a big difference between the two. I would concentrate on pedagogy. What did we learn from the Mandarin experiment where it is eight hours a week rather than 30 minutes a week? Is that a better way of teaching modern foreign languages? As ever, we should invest in the professional development of those who are working with our key stage 1 and key stage 2 children.