Leaving the EU: Student Exchanges

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of foreign exchanges in the Chamber this evening. In my own family, exchanges are an integral part of growing up. I was packed off to Holland at 10 years old, and to a family in France at 11. As my linguistic skills improved, Germany and Hong Kong followed. During my undergraduate studies, I was lucky enough to go on an Erasmus programme at Caen University.

The pattern repeats itself, as in so much of what we do as parents: at home we rarely have a holiday without a foreign exchange student. In the past few years we have welcomed Anne-France and Philippine from Paris; Anya from Moscow; Yining Le from Beijing; Julius and Johanna from Dusseldorf, whose mother was an old friend of mine from university; Eleanor from Loches; and we are just starting to get to know a girl from southern Italy. With two linguist daughters, a great deal of our family time is spent applying for visas for my girls, and entertaining and providing regular meals for visiting teenagers. The experience is not simply about improving the ability to communicate in a different language; the children come back confident and buzzing with new experiences, as well as with a desire to learn better language skills. We have all learnt from Anya and Yining Le, who taught us so much about their different cultures and traditions. We really value the wider network of family and friends we have made as a result of getting to know them.

The same was true for year 6 pupils at Hook Norton Primary School, whom I was proud to see win a British Council international school award earlier this week. Their teacher told me about 18 years of exchanges with Sweden and how much the children gain from it. Bure Park Primary School, which I also visited this week, exchanges annually with Italian and German children. I want such opportunities to be available to all our young people.

We must give greater consideration to language learning. The Government have been laudably keen to promote STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—and are making efforts to ensure that modern foreign languages are part of the EBacc. Nevertheless, language learning is on a downward spiral. The number of GCSEs taken in modern languages fell by more than 7% this year, and this summer’s A-level results show that the number of British students taking languages has almost halved over the past two decades. Applications to study a European language at university have fallen by 20% over the past four years. Those figures show why we do not have enough new teachers leaving our universities to encourage language learning in children at school today and tomorrow.

Earlier this week the Foreign Secretary spoke of his vision for a global Britain:

“The driving purpose of this Government is to strengthen Britain’s global role, to raise our level of national ambition and to prepare for the opportunities before us”.—[Official Report, 27 November 2017; Vol. 632, c. 54.]

How can foreign exchanges help? The international language of business might be English, but the language of selling goes so much deeper. Soft diplomacy involves much more than just talking. We are fortunate that English is widely spoken, but our success in achieving a truly global Britain depends on our ability not only to speak to people abroad but to understand their culture—shouting loudly will not sell our products worldwide.

The recent “Languages for the Future” report by the brilliant British Council makes it clear:

“Without language skills we lose out not only through the restricted ability to communicate internationally, but even more importantly through the closing down of opportunities for overseas work experience, a lack of international business sense, a failure to appreciate that other cultures have different ways of doing things and a potential tendency to overestimate the global importance of British culture.”

Young people who have spent time immersed in the domestic life of another country are so much better equipped for selling global Britain, global justice and our values and opportunities.

Another great advantage of student exchanges is that they are a comparatively cheap way to travel. The cost is that of the fare and, where appropriate, the visa. It is important that the Government think seriously about how they deal with young people on exchanges, because when my daughter visits her Russian exchange, she has to fill out a new visa application each time and come up to London to have her biometrics taken. We put up barriers on both sides, because her 17-year-old Russian exchange was charged almost £500 for her UK visa application, which had to be expedited as her initial application was refused—all this to allow her to come on our family holiday to Wales. Although I realise this goes beyond the Minister’s remit, I hope he will work with his colleagues in the Home Office to ensure that teenagers such as those two, as well as the young people who take part in programmes such as Erasmus, are encouraged in their exchanging, particularly after we leave the EU.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Another dimension, as I am sure she knows, is that schools often go on visits abroad—not necessarily exchanges—and again there can be obstacles. Does she agree that schools sometimes find it difficult to recruit language teachers?

[Victoria Prentis]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The type of foreign language exchanges I am talking about involve living with a family abroad and the depth of understanding that can be gained only in a domestic setting. That is what I am so keen to promote. Of course it is difficult for schools to arrange such exchanges, but it is worth it.

I thank all teachers who put themselves out and often spend their own holidays travelling with groups of teenagers—not everybody’s cup of tea—to far-flung places to enable deep, worthwhile experiences for our children. I hope the Minister will join me in encouraging that.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

This is a classic example of a debate in which I made to leave Chamber, realised what the debate was about and came back with alacrity. I am hugely enjoying the hon. Lady’s contribution, and I am in total agreement with her. Friendships formed between foreign students can be crucial. President Clinton was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, which helped his understanding and attitude towards this country.

[Victoria Prentis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is about a depth of friendship that encourages not only language skills but the ability to have a network of friends and contacts. My early experiences of foreign exchanges gave me the confidence to travel abroad in the political sphere. I was able to spend some time working for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and at the White House in the States, but I doubt that I would ever have thought of such opportunities had I not had my early experiences of travel and of the value of building networks across continents, which early foreign exchange travel offers to students. I cannot tell him how valuable I think such experiences are.

Exchanges can give our young people the internationalist outlook that we need. We should capitalise on the teenage ability to make friends easily and encourage teenagers to open their eyes to new and different opportunities. Even though learning a language inevitably involves hard work on grammar and vocab tests, the speed with which one picks up a language when immersed in family life is second to none. Learning with a friend is so much better, and the technology available to students makes learning easily accessible. My children have Mandarin and Russian keyboards on their phones to enable them to text their exchanges—that does make policing their phones rather difficult when their mother does not speak either language. Nevertheless, I commend their enthusiasm, and it seems to be the way that the children of today find easiest to communicate. I am impressed that one of my daughters does her texting in Russian and the Russian exchange does hers in English, which is really commendable—and not just done to frustrate mothers.

Finally, language learning has lifelong health benefits. Studies of people with Alzheimer’s disease have shown that, on average, symptoms started four and half years later for people who could speak at least two languages. It is perhaps appropriate to mention my grandmother here. She is well into her 90s, but continues to work on her languages through audiobooks now that her eyesight is not as good as it once was. She successfully taught generations of children of all abilities to communicate in a selection of languages—albeit all with a strong Welsh accent. I ask the Minister to join me in thanking her and today’s generation of language teachers, including the inspirational women who teach my daughters. I ask him to encourage them to promote the student exchanges that we need to take global Britain forward.