Education: Language Assistants

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the point that the noble Lord makes but I also think that it is very much a two-way traffic. That is one of the benefits of this scheme. Other countries benefit from our young people going there and helping to spread English and we benefit from young people from those countries coming here and helping our young people to learn languages.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, clearly the Government have a lot of thinking to do to build fully on the Dearing report and to develop fully their policy on languages and IT. The Business Secretary is concerned about the Government’s rush to reform and the resulting mistakes. Education policy is a prime example of this, as are the Building Schools for the Future fiasco, the schools budget cut despite announcements, and the embarrassing U-turn on school sport. Does the Minister agree with his colleagues in the coalition that education policy is a car crash, or is it perhaps a rail crash?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, whichever travelling metaphor is used that my brain is not quick enough to think of, I feel extremely comfortable with the direction of travel taken by the Government on their education reforms. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able early on to introduce the Academies Bill. So far, we have received more than 330 applications from schools to convert to academies. We are making rapid progress across the piece in education.

As for modern languages, which was the point behind the original Question, from which we have deviated quite a long way, the review of the curriculum is an extremely important part of how we address the very serious challenges, some of which we inherited from the previous Government, around the teaching of modern foreign languages. We will announce the review in the new year, and the review will be a proper, thorough and rigorous look at the place of modern foreign languages in the primary and secondary curriculums.