Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of including Malayalam in the curriculum.

The government is committed to increasing the number of pupils studying languages at GCSE, including languages that are reflected in modern Britain. That is why the teaching of languages is in the national curriculum for pupils from age 7 to 14, and why GCSE languages were included as part of the English Baccalaureate suite of subjects in 2010.

It is ultimately for schools to decide which languages they wish to teach, and the department does not specify which languages should be taught or how to teach them. Schools can therefore teach Malayalam if they wish.