Lesser-taught languages

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

I wish to express my disappointment at the fact that a number of exam bodies have decided to pull out of teaching GCSE and A-level for lesser-taught modern languages. It seems that from 2016 or 2017 we will lose a large number of what are referred to as lesser-known languages, and for teaching purposes as modern languages. Those include Arabic, modern Greek, Japanese, Urdu, Bengali, modern Hebrew, Punjabi, Polish, Dutch, Persian, Gujarati and Turkish. In short, my case is that a short-term decision by exam bodies, supposedly made on the grounds of low uptake and/or financial viability, will put at risk the UK’s future trade, diplomatic and cultural relationships with many future economic success stories.

The internationally recognised group known as the Next-11 countries—the House will be grateful that I will not list them all—have been identified as countries set to enjoy rapid and sizable growth. However, with these cuts to exam board qualifications we are set to dismiss, among others, Arabic, Bengali, Turkish and Persian. Indeed, for Britain there will not be the Next-11 countries, but there may be the Next-7. The British Council identified key languages based on economic, cultural and educational factors. Those included Arabic, Turkish, Portuguese and Japanese, yet they too have been identified as of no further interest to exam bodies.

I fear that unfortunately we are not learning the lessons of the past. We have all become familiar with the success of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which were identified decades ago as the growth economies of the future. Yet to all intents and purposes, for some years we in the UK have fared less well than some of our competitor neighbouring EU countries in doing business with the BRIC countries, and I suggest that in part that was because we did not teach and master the languages of the economies that we knew were about to emerge—and emerge they did. Are we now set to repeat those mistakes with the Next-11 countries and the so-called MIST countries—those countries have taken over from the BRICs and are Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey?

Let me use the example of Turkey for illustrative purposes. Turkish is currently taught at GCSE and A-level, but the OCR board’s proposed policy is to cease to teach it as a modern language. The OCR—a not-for-profit organisation—has cited commercial viability as the reason for not proceeding with that exam, arguing that only 1,700 GCSE students and 600 A-level students entered for it. The decision to drop the GCSE and the A-level baffles me, frankly, not least because the number of candidates achieving A-level grades A to E is higher than that for courses the exam bodies are keeping, namely German and Spanish. The decision by the OCR is further complicated—and difficult to understand and challenge—by the fact that on the grounds of commercial sensitivity it will not share the financial information it claims is driving this decision. If it is abandoning the course, I struggle, as one who spent 25 years in business, to understand what could be commercially sensitive.

Perhaps I can make a note of my first two points for the Minister. Will he confirm that the Government are not putting financial pressure on exam bodies, or, indeed, if they are putting pressure on exam bodies? Will he require them to share the financial rationale for that decision with him or his officials?

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very important case. May I just tell him about the Shpresa project, which works in my area among families who came to the UK from Kosovo? Teaching people Albanian is a very important part of what it does. The young people are very keen that there should be a GCSE, as there is not one at the moment. The exam body has told them that raising £100,000 would enable a GCSE to be introduced. So far, they have raised £80,000.

[Nick de Bois]

I pay tribute to them for their ingenuity and their willingness to try to solve their problem. That points to something I would like to say about the diaspora a little later, but I applaud their entrepreneurial and, shall we say, Conservative instincts to try to find a solution for themselves.

I am quite happy to respect the commercial sensitivity argument about not putting information in the public domain. However, as the Minister will see later, I am anxious that if he were to explore that argument with the OCR it would perhaps either provide comfort or expose as flawed the argument that has been put forward.

On the wider argument, does the Minister agree that the case for learning modern languages is very simple? The world is becoming even smaller. We are seeking to deliver on the Government’s pledge and target to build exports across the globe and to maintain strong trading arrangements with the EU. We will therefore need fluent, well-educated people to build our relationships with Turkey, Poland, Iran, Bangladesh and the other countries I have mentioned. We will need language skills to do business with many of those countries.