Schools and Universities: Language Learning

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, like other Members of your Lordships’ House, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for initiating today’s debate and speaking so eloquently that in many ways her speech alone will have given the Minister plenty of questions to answer. I pay tribute also to the work she has done as chair of the APPG—and so much more, because modern foreign languages are so important, yet they are so undervalued.

I declare an interest as a Cambridge academic, where I teach European politics. At times, having fluency in other modern foreign languages is useful, because I can say to my students, “Yes, it’s alright if you let me have that in German or French—I can read it”. But also in the last academic year, I was a HESA statistic. During lockdown I decided, having refreshed my French, German and a bit of Italian, that maybe I should try a language that I had not tried before—Spanish. In a sense, it was a very easy thing to do because, if you have some Italian, French and Latin, Spanish is quite easy. I went from beginners through to C1 level. Cambridge in its wisdom has now decided that, if you are studying C1, you get a diploma, so I now have a nice university certificate. They said that it meant they had to register me with HESA, because it was a level 4 qualification.

I am one of the few people studying at what counts as university level who is doing it in my spare time, alongside large numbers of undergraduates, postgraduates and junior researchers at Cambridge, who have realised that doing a modern foreign language is really important. My university is one of those that still understands the importance of modern foreign languages; we have an excellent department of modern foreign languages, and a centre that allows many people in the university and beyond to learn a language ab initio.

We are in a minority, yet one piece of information we were given in the excellent Library briefing was the concern of schools that Russell Group universities may not value modern foreign languages. That should not be seen to be the case; modern foreign languages at A-level are really important. One thing that we need to do is to remind students and teachers that language learning is important. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, that it can be fun, but it is also a vital life skill. We assume that somehow, you do languages for GCSE or A-level, tick a box and move on, but it is not necessarily the same as some other qualifications, because these are life skills which you can use not just at 15 or 18 but throughout your life.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, pointed out, we should be thinking about modern languages as not just things that people study at school but as part of lifelong learning. What thought has the Minister given to people having the opportunity to learn languages at various stages? Yes, primary schools are important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, said. It is much better to learn a language at nursery or primary school than in your 50s—as I tried to do recently—but the opportunity to learn those languages is important.

The previous Government felt that modern foreign languages were important for the economy, or because they enhance other academic skills. However, they are also important not just for diplomacy in the formal sense, which the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, talked about, but for the ability for us to connect interculturally. Yes, other people might speak English, and they might speak English to us in the room, but they will speak their own language in the margins. If we can speak those languages as well, our communication and depth of experience will be so much stronger. Will the Government pledge to increase the opportunities for people at all stages of life?