Plurilingual and Intercultural Education

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Coussins]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take in response to the recommendations of the Council of Europe of 2 February (CM/Rec(2022)1) on the importance of promoting plurilingual and intercultural education to support democratic culture.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I remind the House of my language interests, as set out in the register.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, languages education is an important element in developing a democratic and socially just society. We are incredibly fortunate to have English as our lingua franca, but we also value familiarity with other languages and cultures. Highlighting the interconnectedness of languages and increasing the profile of community languages is part of our new language support offer from 2023. Revised GCSE content will make languages more accessible and improve uptake. New measures will increase the number of language teachers.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased, of course, that as one of the 47 members of the Council of Europe, the UK signed up to this recommendation and I am encouraged by the positive words from the Minister. But the Government also decided to withdraw the UK’s membership of the council’s European Centre for Modern Languages. This means that our teachers no longer have access to a wide range of valuable professional development opportunities, which, at a time of MFL teacher shortage and under-recruitment, seems perverse. Will the Minister agree to reconsider UK membership of the ECML as one of the specific measures we could take to back up our in-principle support for this recommendation?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My understanding is that the decision to withdraw from the council’s European Centre for Modern Languages was taken over a decade ago and we have no plans to rejoin at this time. We currently fund teacher continuing professional development via the National Centre for Excellence for Language Pedagogy. To encourage recruitment for the academic year 2023-24, we have increased the language bursary to £25,000 and we are also offering a prestigious scholarship worth £27,000 for French, German and Spanish trainees.