Education: Foreign Languages

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I can certainly say to the noble Baroness that I will take back her suggestion to the department. It is important for all of us across the House to underline the importance of languages. The new national curriculum, which has now been published, includes a statutory foreign language at key stage 2. We believe that this will encourage students to take up modern languages, and indeed encourage schools to offer them. As I said earlier, the English baccalaureate is already encouraging more young people to take a language at GCSE level. Let us not forget that it was in 2004 that a statutory undertaking to provide languages at schools was removed. We are trying to restore that, and ensure that this medium to long-term process is long lasting.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

Does my noble friend not agree with me that one very welcome development is that many universities now offer joint degrees? They teach modern languages alongside engineering or business studies, for example. This is exactly what employers tell us they want.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend makes a very important point. We need to understand the issue of languages at universities. Many universities offer languages as an addition to other disciplines, and people benefit from that. I come from the business community, and when I was on the board of a company we recognised that such degree courses provide a particular technical training alongside a language. Language training has changed—languages such as Chinese are much in demand by employers, and are being encouraged across the board.