Education: Foreign Language Teaching

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on the stalwart and steadfast leadership that she has shown on this issue. A difference of opinion remains between her and me on the decision over key stage 4 modern foreign languages but, having been guiding the ship of the Department for Education when that decision was taken, I have naturally taken an ongoing interest in this, which is I why wanted to make a contribution to the debate today. I think that the noble Baroness’s introduction covered all the issues that could possibly be covered in this debate, so I apologise in advance for repeating some of them; I am just going to pick out two or three that matter particularly to me.

I very much welcome the Government’s decision on this; it is a good thing now to make modern foreign languages mandatory in primary schools. I welcome that and wish them well, and I hope that we can work together to bring about success. That was a decision that I faced over a decade ago, and I decided not to go ahead with it. However, coupled with the decision not to have mandatory foreign languages at key stage 4 was the decision to move the subject in time to primary schools and make it compulsory at key stages 1 and 2—never to leave it floating as being compulsory only at key stage 3, which I regret. I do not think it was the wrong decision not to make it compulsory way back in 2002—I am not sure that we had the resourcing within the nation and the education system to do so—but there are certainly lessons to be learnt about what has gone on in the decade since. It is those that I want to spend two or three minutes talking about now, and I have two or three questions to finish off with.

What went wrong? What would we do differently if we had to start again? First, giving the school system 10 years to enact something was far too long. School leavers or class teachers who were there at that point would not be there 10 years later, so there was no lever to give a sense of urgency to make primary schools get on with it. Secondly, although ring-fenced money was given to modern foreign languages teaching at the start of the process, it was put into the general school budget around 2006—not under my leadership but under later leadership, That was a mistake. It took the lever away again from encouraging primary schools to teach modern foreign languages. Thirdly, we never solved the problem of there being sufficiently highly qualified teachers in the primary sector. However, there were some things that went well, which is why 97% of the schools at least have a modern foreign language specialist.

It is worth the Government bearing these points in mind as they go forward with this task. First, we made great use of the specialist language schools, which are not there now. Those provided a core of partnership that is badly needed if primary schools are to make a go of it. They cannot do it alone; they need partnerships to join and leadership somewhere in the education system, because it might not be there in their own school. Secondly, we had co-ordination by the local education authority, which is no longer a player in the game. I am not sure where the co-ordination will now come from. Thirdly, we had designated advanced skills teachers who played a leadership role. There are some things that I would do differently but some things did have an effect, as we can see a decade later.

My questions for the Minister on this occasion are these. First, I found it quite difficult to find out the number of primary ITT-model foreign-language places for next year. Does he have those figures? I attempted to look them up but could not find them. Secondly, is partnership not absolutely key? There should be partnership with key stage 3 in the secondary schools to which those schools’ children are likely to go, partnership with other language speakers in the wider community and partnership with expertise wherever it might exist, whether in local colleges and universities or in neighbouring primary and specialist schools. The Government have not gone for a system of organisation where they force partnership on schools. I am worried about how schools will voluntarily make these partnerships, and make them effectively. That came out of points 5A and 5B in the consultation process which the Government have just taken forward. That was the most raised issue and I am not sure what the Government’s response to it is.

My last point is on pedagogy. We all want it to happen but making it happen will depend on the quality of teaching in each and every one of our primary schools and for each and every one of their pupils. What is the Minister doing to improve pedagogy and teacher quality in modern foreign languages? However, I wish the Government well with this. It is long overdue and I regret the gap that has happened, but it gives us a glorious chance to get it right in the years to come.