Schools: Modern Languages

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is quite right that the EBacc has had a positive impact on the number of children taking up languages in schools. Our goal is for 90% of pupils to take the core academic subjects, including languages at GCSE, so we hope to see that continue.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, the UK’s poor performance in language teaching and learning is surely one of the factors that hinders our international competitiveness. Given that HMG recently announced that they were investing £10 million in promoting Mandarin in schools, will the Minister consider allocating a similar sum to boost the take-up of other languages that are important to our economic, diplomatic and cultural success, including French, German and Spanish?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The Chancellor specifically announced funding for Mandarin because we start from a very low base. With China’s increasing importance in the global economy, it was an area where we felt that additional investment would be welcome. As I said, French, German and Spanish remain the languages that are most often taught in schools. We are certainly trying to continue to increase the quality of language teaching. I mentioned several projects where we have given additional funding. We also want to encourage our best language graduates to go into teaching, which is why we have increased the amount that they can get in bursaries if they decide to do so. We hope to continue that.