Education: Polish A-level

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, do the Government not agree that, while traditionally our relations with Poland have been extremely close, one or two statements recently made by the Prime Minister have not improved them? Would not the encouragement of the learning of Polish by British, as well as other, students be of considerable importance at a time when our relations with Poland are so important?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord that our relations with Poland are extremely important. We are determined to ensure that a wide suite of languages is available for students so that they have the freedom to choose whichever language they wish to study.