Lord Storey
Main Page: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, the Asset Languages programme was indeed valuable. However, we are introducing a range of other language provisions, from school through to university, to ensure that our language skills increase over the years.
Lord Storey
My Lords, my noble friend the Minister may not be aware that the Select Committee report, Roads to Success: SME Exports, was published on Friday. One of its recommendations was about the importance of foreign languages, particular those not traditionally taught in schools: for example, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. Has the Ministry thought about how we can develop these languages, which are crucial to our exports? A thought might be Saturday schools.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My noble friend makes an interesting point. Many schools up and down the land have after-school clubs in languages, and some have Saturday schools as well. There are also supplementary schools that meet at the weekend. These are largely set up by specific ethnic communities and are where children who go to a state school during the week learn their heritage language: for instance, Arabic, Polish or Greek. However, I agree that there is more that we can do, and Saturday clubs might provide a way through.