Foreign Languages: Economic Value

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government welcome the results of the report, which do indeed highlight the notable achievements of the programme to date. We continue to explore how we can provide greater support for the study of other languages. Regarding the Department for International Trade, the noble Baroness will be aware that we recently announced a refreshed export strategy, Made in the UK, Sold to the World, giving UK exporters support services to seize the opportunities secured through our trade agreements. This is focused on market barriers such as language. I am happy to talk to colleagues there and at the Treasury, as the noble Baroness suggests.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

Has my noble friend seen the evidence given just a few days ago by a former British ambassador to Moscow to a Lords committee, in which he lamented the decline of foreign language skills in the Foreign Office, especially Russian? Does she agree that it is quite important that diplomats who represent the United Kingdom in and promote exports to foreign countries should be able to understand and speak a foreign language? Can she therefore tell the House what progress has been made to improve foreign language skills in the Foreign Office?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend. The FCDO has some 800 specially trained linguists qualified in 46 languages, operating in 111 posts around the world. This figure includes almost 80 heads of mission.

Schools: Modern Languages

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in ensuring that more pupils study modern languages in primary and secondary schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the take-up of modern foreign languages at GCSE is too low. While the percentage of those studying an MFL GCSE has increased from 40% in 2010 to 46% last year, more needs to be done. To this end we have, among a number of initiatives, created nine MFL hubs and have worked closely with Ofsted on its proposed new inspection framework. This has increased focus on the EBacc curriculum, which includes languages.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

I share my noble friend’s concern. The latest survey I have seen shows that half the schools in England and Wales have dropped A-level courses in modern languages. Part of the problem is that our universities are not turning out enough graduates who can teach modern languages, and that is because universities themselves are dropping degree courses in modern languages. What are we doing about that?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My noble friend is right; however, noble Lords will remember that we in this House passed the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. We have a market-driven higher education system where student choices drive demand. The role of government is to create the right conditions for providers to respond to economic and strategic priorities. To this end, universities need to do more to explain the longitudinal earnings outcomes of language degrees. For example, in a study that my department released in June of last year, language students at the median point, five years after graduation, earned more than those studying law, physical sciences or biological sciences. That sort of awareness needs to get out to potential undergraduates.

English Baccalaureate: Creative and Technical Subjects

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott on initiating this important debate, which has produced some wonderful speeches this afternoon. I want to focus my remarks today on one subject which was mentioned very powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, which is music.

In the debate on EBacc last year the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said:

“I am not against maths, English, science, foreign languages, history or geography”,


but she went on to say that if you have a priority, you are saying that you,

“give less priority to the other things”.—[Official Report, 4/2/16; col. 57.]

The worry is that when you say that some subjects are important, you are saying that other subjects are less important.

Some of your Lordships may have heard Julian Lloyd-Webber on the radio last week talking about the brand-new Birmingham Conservatoire which has just opened and where he is the director. He said that removing arts subjects from the core curriculum was not conducive to creating the artists of the future. He compared Britain to countries in the Far East where he said it was perfectly normal to learn a musical instrument. He was worried that here in Britain we are missing out on a massive amount of talent. The Minister and other Ministers say that they share these ambitions for music. I looked at the Government’s national plan for music education, published six years ago, and it said all the right things: music education should be available to as many children as possible; music can enhance the lives of all young people; and music should not be the preserve only of better-off families who can afford tuition in musical instruments.

My brother and I, many years ago, attended the same school in Manchester. In our first year, aged 11 or 12, we were taken to the Manchester Free Trade Hall to hear the Hallé Orchestra. My elder brother heard Handel’s “Water Music”, then badgered our father to buy him the LP, which he played morning, noon and night until the record actually wore out. When it was my turn to go, I heard Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Overture”, with the conductor explaining how the music told the story of the fighting, the love scenes and the death scenes. These were really inspiring musical experiences. Many noble Lords will have seen Gareth Malone on television struggle to build a choir in a school among very sceptical, if not hostile pupils, especially the boys. It was an uphill struggle, yet somehow he pulled them all together and when they finally performed in front of the school and their parents, the pupils, including the boys, not only discovered the joy of making music together but also discovered something new in themselves—a previously hidden talent, teamwork and a new confidence.

As other noble Lords have said, we know from research and from experience that the benefits of a music education go much wider. It can help you retain verbal information, enhance your intellectual development, increase your social confidence and help with maths. The connection between music and maths is very well known. Of course there are huge benefits to the economy from the creative industries and the music industry. We have some of the best musical colleges and conservatoires in the world, some of the best orchestras and some of the best musical theatre, but we have a shortage of skilled orchestral musicians who are leaders, principals, sub-principals or in numbered string positions. We need a pipeline of talent coming forward.

I acknowledge what the Government are doing. Music education hubs have been established to give children the opportunity to learn a music instrument. The exam board of the Royal Schools of Music, the ABRSM, examines 300,000 pupils each year in the UK who are learning to play a musical instrument. The Department for Education has worked with the ABRSM to develop the Classic 100 music app for primary schools, with music ranging from “Peter and the Wolf” to Beethoven’s fifth and Handel’s “Messiah”. My right honourable friend Nick Gibb, the Minister, is on record as saying that the new national curriculum will ensure that music is taught as an academic subject. However, in a survey of schools in 2016-17, in only two out of three schools was music a compulsory part of the education, despite it being part of the national curriculum.

My final and most important point is that music can be intrinsically life-enhancing and inspiring for every child and every adult throughout their lives. So while I am sympathetic to the emphasis placed on core academic subjects, it should not downgrade other subjects which are crucial for a child’s personal development. My plea to the Government is this: please do everything you can to make sure that music classes are not the ugly duckling of the school curriculum; they must not be the last courses to be added and the first to be cut.

Education: Polish A-level

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am happy to give the noble Baroness that assurance. China is obviously a country of huge strategic importance to this country and education is very important in that. A great deal of activity is going on. In addition to the £10 million that we have given to boost Mandarin teaching in schools, excellent work is being done at the IOE Confucius Institute, supported ably by organisations such as HSBC and Swire.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister tell us what progress has been made on teaching foreign languages overall at A-level? In particular, to what extent are we reversing the trend in the teaching of German, which has shown the sharpest decline in recent years?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend makes a very good point about the decline in German, but as I said, we believe that, with our expectation that 90% of pupils will take the EBacc, this will further increase the number of pupils taking GCSEs in modern languages. Certainly, the number of pupils taking languages in the EBacc has gone up by 25% over the last five years. We hope that this will have a compounding effect on A-levels.

Schools: Foreign Languages

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of progress in teaching foreign languages in schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, the inclusion of a foreign language in the English baccalaureate measure has raised entries from pupils in England by 20% since 2012. We are reforming GCSEs and A-levels in foreign languages, with new teaching from September 2016, to ensure that they are demanding and relevant to employers, and further and higher education. From September last year, maintained primary schools have had to teach a foreign language to pupils from the age of seven.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that one of the many advantages of learning a foreign language is the practical benefit to trade and diplomacy? In the case of non-European languages such as Cantonese, Mandarin and Arabic, where the sounds and structure are very different, is it not easier for children to learn them if they are taught them from a very early age?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend about the importance of these matters. It is clear that developing language skills helps cognitive development. Offering more children the opportunity to learn Mandarin, for instance, will help to encourage mobility between the UK and China, and the long-term success of our economy. The Prime Minister has pledged to increase substantially the number of people learning Mandarin Chinese. The Confucius Institute at the IOE is leading the way in this regard.

Education: Contribution to Economic Growth

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I should like to start, if I may, by thanking everyone in this House for making me feel so welcome. Your Lordships from all parts of the House, the officials, the attendants and the police—everybody has been immensely helpful. I also want to thank my noble friends Lady Seccombe and Lady Jenkin of Kennington, who have helped me navigate my way around this place, both procedurally but also geographically, which is important for someone with a really bad sense of direction. I want to reassure my noble friend the government Chief Whip that if she ever finds me looking confused in a corridor, it will not—I hope—be to do with government policy.

I chose as part of my title Didsbury in the City of Manchester because that is where I was born, brought up and educated. I chose it also for a second, somewhat paradoxical reason—paradoxical because I have spent most of my working life in London. But I am conscious of the metropolitan bubble that so many of the commentariat seem to inhabit. For me that is best summed up by John Humphrys, introducing the weather forecast on the radio, saying, “It’s raining over Broadcasting House. What’s it doing in the rest of the country?”. Didsbury will be, for me, a constant reminder that London is not the centre of the universe.

I have been advised that it is customary in a maiden speech to talk briefly about one’s career before entering this House. I am not sure that in my case “career” is quite the right word. It has always felt more like snakes and ladders—but it has been my good fortune that there have been rather more ladders than snakes. I have been a teacher, and I was a trainee banker. I never got beyond “trainee”—and bearing in mind the banking crisis, I do not think I was alone in that. I have worked in business and for a manufacturing company, and for over 20 years in the world of communications. But I have also had the great privilege of working with three politicians whom I greatly admire—my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding when he was Industry Secretary, my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne when he was Conservative Party leader, and Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street in the 1980s.

I now turn to the subject of the debate, and I want to focus on one specific area—the need for our schools to turn out more students who can speak and understand a foreign language. My noble friend Lady Sharp has great expertise in this area. Why does this subject matter? The UK trades with more than 200 countries, and most of them are non-English speaking. Three-quarters of the world’s population do not speak English. Many people have English as a second language, but what arrogance to think that other people should learn our language rather than our learning other people’s languages. Arrogance, real or perceived, is not helpful in a competitive marketplace.

Of course, the most obvious practical benefit of knowing a foreign language is that you can communicate in the language of the people with whom you are doing business. But there is another important point: speaking the language of another country also opens the door to an understanding of that country—an understanding of the culture and of the mindset. That must surely give you a competitive edge when you are trying to clinch that deal or sign that contract.

A few months ago the British Chambers of Commerce conducted a survey. Two out of three businesses that were thinking of exporting saw language as a barrier, and the vast majority of businesses did not speak a foreign language well enough to conduct business in the buyer’s tongue. This is not altogether surprising. For years now, language learning in our schools has been in decline. For example, this year the number of students who took French at A-level was 50% lower than the number 10 years ago. Of all the A-levels passed by state-funded students, those in modern languages—all modern languages combined—represented less than 3%. It was, I am afraid, a mistake in 2004 to remove compulsory language learning at key stage 4, for 14 to 16 year-olds. I welcome the various steps being taken to try to reverse this trend.

From next year it will be compulsory for children in primary schools to be taught a foreign language. We know that it is much easier to absorb the sounds of new languages when you are young, and more difficult when you are older. I speak from experience: I am learning Italian, and have been doing so for many years. I want to draw attention to one practical point here. I am thinking of children leaving a primary school where they have been taught, say, Mandarin or Spanish, and then finding themselves in a secondary school that teaches French and German. It is very important for there to be co-ordination between primary and secondary schools. The introduction of the English baccalaureate is another important advance, and EBacc is already having an impact on the numbers taking a modern foreign language at GCSE. Let us hope that continues.

I have two final points to make. Of course pupils need an understanding of grammar, and need to be able to translate the written word. But as we all know, oral skills are vital, so that they can speak the language with some confidence. Secondly, as our trade with non-European countries expands, the learning of non-European languages becomes ever more important. This echoes what the Prime Minister was saying in China yesterday.

All this is a long-term process, not least in ensuring that we have enough skilled teachers in modern languages. These are the challenges for the Government of the day and for our schools, so I very much hope that the House will have the chance to come back to this subject at a future date.