Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what actions they have taken to promote modern foreign language learning amongst people of all ages.

The Department for Education has made study of a modern foreign or ancient language compulsory for pupils at KS2 (ages 7-11) in maintained schools in England. By introducing the English Baccalaureate, we have stopped the decline in modern foreign languages seen in the last decade. The proportion of the cohort in state funded schools entered for a modern foreign language GCSE has risen from 40 per cent in 2010 to 49 per cent in 2015.

The Government’s ambition is that 90 per cent of pupils in mainstream secondary schools will enter GCSEs in the EBacc subjects, including a language. The government’s response to the consultation on implementing the English Baccalaureate will be published in due course, and will set out how this ambition will be achieved.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has also invested £10million over 10 years, in to the Routes into Languages programme that aims to boost recruitment to language degrees in higher education. It is working with the University Council for Modern Languages (UCML) and the Routes into Language Steering Group to support a sustainable programme for the encouragement of language study at university.

Additionally, under Erasmus+ and its predecessor EU education programmes, over 200,000 British students have been able to study abroad, improving their skills and employability.