Education: Foreign Language Teaching

Lord Lyell Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Lyell (Con)]

My Lords, no subject in your Lordships’ House could have a better champion than the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. I am one of her—if I can call it so—pupils. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, is here, because 60 years ago, at the school we both attended, I was decreed to be incapable of taking on board anything to do with science or mathematics and was placed in the languages stream. I have never forgotten what I learnt there. I listened to the marvellous and very encouraging comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, about rigour in language tuition. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and I will remember the rigour with which we had to learn languages in those far-off days.

I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for all the expert advice that she has produced today, together with her commitment, drive and enthusiasm in beating the drum for something which appears not to be of enormous importance for school curricula, especially at an early stage: primary school, or when moving on to secondary school. I am afraid I am a bit lost with what the noble Baroness referred to as stages—is it stage 4? In any case, the first stage is the most important one.

The noble Baroness referred to mandatory tuition, and I had a question mark there. I believe that it can be, and ought to be, all the more important, since in another part of your Lordships’ House we have just had an enthralling debate on the world wide web with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. That demonstrates the worldwide means of communication, and I suspect that a good bit of the world wide web is not in English, although English is probably the majority language of communication. If the Minister has time, I hope that he can say—or write to me or let me know somehow—whether there is a chance of using the world wide web and expanding its fantastic capacity for teaching and furthering worldwide communication.

On a personal basis—if the noble Baroness will forgive me this—when I was at the University of Oxford, I often had an essay crisis in the middle of the night. BBC Radio 2 went off air at midnight, but one did not worry—there were stations that could be listened to for 24 hours out of 24. On long wave, one had French radio. I was able to take all four French channels, and I am delighted that they have improved my communication. I then came to learn about the BBC World Service and all the languages and services that it provided.

Part of my activities in your Lordships’ House dealt with a thing called the North Atlantic Assembly, consisting of NATO parliamentarians. I was drafted on to a committee that dealt with communications and putting over some aspects of Western policy, especially in what we used to call the Soviet Union. The population of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s was 240 million people, of whom 130 million did not speak Russian. The BBC World Service was able to put out communication and wonderful ideas about our way of life in the eight or 10 different languages that were spoken in the Soviet Union. The noble Baroness’s drive for languages can open the world to young people.

I am sure that we will hear from the Minister about professional teachers and their methods, but I wonder whether he can give me some indication of the new psychology of youngsters, since it is 50 or 60 years since the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and I were drilled with rigour in languages. Modern languages can be fun for youngsters for both sport and chat but, my goodness, in future when I am long gone, I am sure that their professions, business, trade and finance will be improved, and it is vital that modern languages are part of their life. I am immensely grateful to the noble Baroness for this debate and, once again, I hope that she will forgive me for the usual Lyell hobbyhorse.