Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase uptake of foreign language GCSEs.

The government is committed to supporting modern foreign languages across schools, and across the languages pipeline. In our response to the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, we made a commitment to work with the sector to understand successful approaches to supporting the languages pipeline. This starts at primary by reforming the curriculum, increasing take up at GCSE, and boosting demand at A level and degree level, to meet future social and economic needs, including learning from successful local models.

Subject to the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we are also requiring academy schools to teach the revised national curriculum, including languages programmes of study. We are also supporting the quality of languages teaching through continued investment in the National Consortium for Languages Education, which provides teachers with national high-quality professional development.