Education: Languages

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I was going to speak in French today but was told that that may be a faux pas. So I said to myself, “C’est la vie”. However, I am very glad to be speaking in this debate and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for initiating it because the subject affects children’s long-term ability to communicate effectively when they go out into the big wide world. I am interested in their personal intellectual development, commercial advantages, social cohesion through the reduction of xenophobia and their awareness of other cultures. A wonderfully exciting way to achieve this is through the learning of languages. The ability to understand and communicate in another language is a lifelong skill for education, employment and leisure, and provides a sense of global citizenship and personal fulfilment, as we have heard.

I always find it intriguing how foreign politicians, business leaders, football mangers, and sportsmen and women whose first language is not English are able to answer questions and make statements in a language other than their own—and we expect them to do so. I wonder how many of us could show that same linguistic dexterity. Or would we just, in the good old British tradition, shout louder in the hope of being understood?

We should be encouraging, improving and increasing the teaching of modern languages in schools as early as possible—from primary education right through to university. Yet this year, for the first time, French, one of the most commonly taught languages in schools, slipped out of the top 10 most popular GCSE subjects. Sadly, less than one in four pupils now sits the French exam. This year’s GCSE take-up figures showed the number of pupils taking French and German had virtually halved since 2002. This is a very worrying trend, and at a teachers’ conference in London recently, teachers voted by 73 per cent to make languages compulsory again at GCSE level to help promote global understanding.

It seems to me that anyone with common sense can see that children who do not have the chance to learn a language will be at a disadvantage and will not be given the opportunity to experience the feelings of achievement and self esteem which come from being able to communicate in another language. For primary school children, learning a new foreign language, such as French, as part of the curriculum enhances their understanding of how languages work and of the similarities and differences between them. It can also be taught using a cross-curriculum approach. It gives children for whom English is a second language the feeling of inclusion and achievement as they are learning a new language on a level playing field. It is always wonderful to see how receptive and enthusiastic young children are when they are learning a new language using stories, games, songs, drama and speech with great enjoyment. At the age of seven, children are noticeably adept at imitating the correct pronunciation. I still remember learning my first French phrase, “Ouvrez la fenêtre”, meaning, “Open the window”.

However, the window of opportunity to learn the basics of language learning may be lost for some children by the time they reach the age of 11 because by then children are more set in their ways, so we need good teachers from the very beginning in those early foundation years. Teaching languages at universities is vital to this because those university students will go on to teach modern languages in our schools. At the University of Exeter, where I am chancellor, so I declare an interest, I am pleased to say that we have a postgraduate certificate in modern foreign languages programme. Many of our students go on to become heads of language departments in UK schools. We also have a primary postgraduate certificate programme that prepares about 25 students each year as language specialists in primary schools. The courses enable students to explore the exciting challenges that face teachers and learners of modern foreign languages in Britain today. It is vital that we feed students through to universities eventually to become teachers themselves.

If we are to send our children out into a global competitive world, they need to be well equipped and not to feel inadequate or to be at a disadvantage when it comes to communicating and succeeding. However, as we have heard, there are sadly still too few primary school teachers who are qualified to teach modern foreign languages to our children and start them off on that wonderful journey of exploration. So will the Minister say in winding up what the Government are doing to encourage the teaching of modern foreign languages in our primary schools today?