Schools: Modern Languages

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will be very interested to hear more about the British Council scheme; it sounds extremely good. I would like to talk to the noble Baroness about that and to see whether we could encourage other organisations into it.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, following the excellent debate on the Academies Bill yesterday—and I hear what the noble Lord has said about reflecting on the teaching of languages in primary schools—I wonder whether, in the Government’s view, the Government’s primary academies should be obliged to teach every child a language. Have the Government made any assessment of the impact of schools opting out of funding provision for teaching languages in other schools in areas where it is a shared service?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The basic question about the overall content, how the curriculum should be constructed and how that applies to all schools is one that the Government are looking at, with regard to academies. There is a presumption that academies will have slightly more freedom over their curriculum than other schools. They are obviously under an obligation to provide a broad and balanced curriculum. Clearly, many academies are already providing excellent language teaching as part of those courses.