Education: Languages

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Coussins]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what importance they attach to the teaching of modern languages in schools and universities.

[Baroness Coussins]

My Lords, modern languages finally hit the headlines this summer. The tipping point was reached when French disappeared from the top 10 GCSE subjects for the first time ever; A-level entries dropped; university departments began to anticipate the cuts by planning reductions in modern language courses; and, to cap it all, schools and local authorities realised that, despite years of investment, languages were no longer to be made compulsory in primary schools. The bleak picture was compounded by the publication last month of an OECD survey that showed that secondary school pupils in the UK spend less time studying languages than their counterparts anywhere else in the developed world. Only 7 per cent of the lesson time of 12 to 14 year-olds is allocated to languages, which is half the amount that they spend on sciences. This puts England joint bottom of a table of 39 countries, alongside Ireland and Estonia and behind Indonesia and Mexico.

This provoked a flurry of articles and comments on why it is important that we get better at languages. Having one or more languages in addition to English is a huge asset to anyone competing in a global labour market at whatever level. Your Lordships' House has debated before the serious disadvantage to UK business and competitiveness of the lack of language skills in the workforce, and I shall not repeat that argument today. In addition to the business case, knowledge of other people's languages opens doors to understanding other people's cultures; and competence in languages provides us with the wherewithal to function in international institutions and to participate in research. The UK's capacity in all these areas is now dangerously low, and we will suffer serious commercial and cultural damage unless we inject a new urgency and commitment into our national approach to learning languages.

The forthcoming review of the national curriculum, and the conclusion of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, in his recent review of university funding, that languages should be a priority subject for public investment, suggest that the timing is right for nothing less than a national languages recovery programme—and I ask the Minister to acknowledge that putting it in such bold terms is absolutely warranted. I also thank the Minister for stepping in at such short notice to reply to this debate, and ask her to convey all our good wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Hill. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, which I chair, will be making recommendations to the curriculum review. I should be grateful if the Minister would tell the House when this will be announced and what the timetable for consultation will be.

Today, I will simply flag up some of the issues around languages that I believe must form part of the review. First, we must begin to put right the disastrous consequences of the policy to make languages optional at key stage 4. The decline in GCSE entries from 2004 has been severe. The vast majority of state schools neither insist on a language post-14 nor even set a benchmark for take-up, as they are meant to do. As a result, languages have become one of the main causes of what the coalition Government have called the “vast gulf” between state and independent schools, with pupil take-up at key stage 4 being only 41 per cent from comprehensives, compared to 81 per cent from independent schools and 91 per cent across all selective schools.

I do not believe that it would be right to force every child to take a language GCSE, but I do believe very strongly that it should be compulsory for every child to study at least one modern foreign language until they are 16, at a level appropriate to them. Fortunately, the Government do not need to reinvent the wheel to apply this model, because the Languages Ladder provides exactly that flexibility. It is a national recognition scheme to reward achievement at all levels, from beginners through to advanced and proficient language learners, and it is calibrated against the Common European Framework of Reference. Will the Minister undertake to look at this as a way of restoring compulsory language teaching up to the age of 16? I noticed recently that one of the major teacher unions, the NASUWT, has come out strongly in favour of compulsory language teaching at key stage 4, and some forward-looking schools are beginning to restrict access to the sixth form to those with a language GCSE.

Given the complete failure of the benchmarking strategy to increase take-up, but also given this Government’s stated desire to loosen central control over schools, I ask the Minister how the Government plan to make schools accountable for improving take-up and attainment in languages.

What about primary schools? We had 92 per cent of primary schools teaching languages in mainstream curriculum time, in anticipation of a statutory framework from 2011, only to discover that the pre-general election wash-up process had resulted in this long-standing commitment being abandoned. The risk now is that, without a statutory requirement, some schools and some LEAs will drop languages again. Certainly I believe that if compulsory language teaching up to the age of 16 is not reinstated, many other primary schools will surely not think it worth investing in language teaching for their seven year-olds, only to send them to secondary school aged 11 where their achievement may not be valued or built on. A survey only last month showed that 75 per cent of local authorities positively want languages to be made compulsory in primary schools, so will the Minister agree that the Government should revert to plan A and do just that?

My final point on schools, before I move on to universities, is to urge the Government to get the people who create the exam syllabuses to be more imaginative. If all that children do for GCSE is more of what they have done between the ages of 11 and 14, and that centres on endless descriptions of what they did over the weekend or describing their family members to an imaginary penfriend, no wonder they are too bored to carry on with it. Research from Australia and Scotland shows that children value and want to do subjects that are seen as serious, even if they find them hard. Too often, the relevance of languages is pitched to children in terms of sport, fashion or going on holiday, but in my view the appeal that would hit home more effectively, as well as being more grounded educationally, would be the relevance and workings of grammar and the whole structure of language, including English, to the child’s capacity for self-expression, intellectual challenge and understanding in the context of a world where it will be a serious disadvantage to be monolingual, even if your one language is English.

Some universities, like some schools, are beginning to acknowledge the importance of languages in their admissions policies by introducing a language requirement for all applicants, irrespective of degree subject. This is certainly a welcome step for the universities concerned but it is also significant for schools, which will need to take those universities’ requirements into account when structuring their timetables and advising their pupils on GCSE option choices.

Alongside this, it is very disappointing to see that other universities are looking at cutting modern language provision. Swansea, for example, is considering proposals which would apparently involve 22 academic staff competing for eight posts in a reduced department and the disappearance of Italian, Russian and Portuguese altogether. This is despite the Welsh Assembly declaring earlier this year that the study of modern languages was a “national strategic priority”. I hope that Swansea and any other university contemplating cutbacks in their languages provision will take a closer look at the Worton report and resist such short-sighted and damaging cuts in languages. The UK needs to produce more specialist linguists to be teachers, translators and interpreters, but we also need more scientists, economists, lawyers and others who can work in English and in another language. That is important for their employment prospects as individuals and for the capacity of UK universities to compete globally.

I should like to ask the Minister what specific action the Government intend to take to reinforce the status of modern languages as “strategically important and vulnerable” subjects at university level. The forum set up after the Worton review is one important contribution which I hope will be continued.

The STEM subjects have rightly attracted attention and strategic investment. Modern languages require the same declaration of priority and leadership from Government to give universities the confidence and incentive to build on their provision, not to diminish it. Professor Worton, in an article in last week’s Times Higher Education supplement, said:

“The case for modern languages in universities has never been more compelling”.

He asks whether universities have the courage to deliver. I ask the Minister whether the Government will have the courage to do likewise.