| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Those findings fitted with evidence from post-mortem studies, which have shown that about a third of people with the physical symptoms of Alzheimer's, such as amyloid plaques, had no cognitive impairment before they died, meaning that their brains somehow fought off the disease. Perhaps there is hope for us monolinguists yet, but we will have to become fluent in another language. The Toronto scientists did not find these effects in those with a knowledge of a language but who were not fluently bilingual.
All this reinforces what I have long believed and what led me to work with Ann Dowling and Sarah Springman in the Cambridge University engineering department to set up the language programme for engineers, about which I spoke in the debate on this subject-also called by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins-last December. I am pleased to report that this programme remains popular, with almost 800 students participating this year. However, it would be even stronger if more students had studied languages in school.
4.58 pm
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, it is welcome that my noble friend has secured today's short debate on the teaching of modern languages in schools and universities. For some years now the general weakening in Britain's performance in this area of education has been alarming and it has shown no signs yet of being reversed. We all owe a debt of gratitude to my noble friend for her untiring work as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, and the number of speakers in the debate shows just how wide is the unease about recent trends. I hope that the Government will take careful note of that and will act more effectively to address the underlying problems.
Government policy in recent years, while paying lip service to the existence of a problem, has done little about it. The welcome acceptance of the recommendation of the much missed Lord Dearing, that modern languages should become part of the primary school curriculum, which is now fading away, was matched-undermined, you might say-by enabling it to be dropped from the
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1401
The case for reversing Britain's increasingly poor performance in learning modern languages can be argued at many levels. I shall focus for the moment on the utilitarian. The Government are quite rightly determined to improve Britain's performance as an exporter. They want Britain's diplomats to concentrate more on that part of their job. It is not a particularly original idea; it has been tried several times in the past. But contracts are won and retained not by diplomats but by businessmen. If fewer and fewer of our businessmen are competent linguists, there will be fewer and fewer export successes. The expansion of our intelligence services is a national priority in the battle against terrorism, but where will competent linguists be found for the intelligence services? A Britain whose relative weight in an increasingly interdependent world is dropping will need to co-operate and build alliances more than in the past. Do we believe that simply expecting everyone to speak our own language and to work in our language will facilitate that?
If one looks out beyond the purely utilitarian arguments, it is surely sobering to think of how we narrow our understanding and perception of other cultures and literatures if we have no knowledge of their languages. How are our world-class universities to retain and improve their standing and reputation for academic excellence if their capacity to study, research in and teach modern languages is continually declining? I hope that the Government will now take a deep breath and look again at the whole range of issues that influence the role of modern languages in our education system. Needed are not just warm words but effective action to reverse the present downward trend.
I welcome the Minister to the Front Bench. She is a loss to our sub-committee in the EU Select Committee system, but she is a great gain to the House.
5.03 pm
Baroness Butler-Sloss: My Lords, I am delighted that this important debate is taking place and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on introducing it. I share everybody else's concern about the loss of languages in schools and universities, but I am concerned also by the failure of the general public to take an interest in languages or to see any need to be concerned. I suspect that they generally think that English is universal and see no reason to worry about anything else. This is unacceptable complacency, when we need to remember that we live in a global community. On a visit to China, I was embarrassed to find that all the delightful young women who were looking after the group that I was with spoke impeccable English, yet none of them had ever left China. It really is an embarrassment.
I recently went to Bordeaux. That was not an embarrassment, nor was the reason that I went. It was
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1402
Our young people must be encouraged to take an interest in languages and the way of life of other countries, which follows from learning their language. It is a crucial part of the general education of young people. What will the Government do, or what do they think they might be able to do, to change a wide culture or, rather, lack of culture towards foreign languages and the way of life of other countries?
5.05 pm
Lord Cobbold: My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, in her Question to Her Majesty's Government. The teaching of modern languages to the young is a matter of great importance. We must not allow ourselves to take the line that, because English has become the leading global language, there is no need for us to learn another.
While the importance of English is a huge advantage, it has its problems. In a recent European Commission survey of Europeans' non-mother-tongue skills, Britain came last out of 28 countries. Languages are crucial to our success in the European, Asia/Pacific and Latin American markets. It is said that only one-third of UK university graduates are confident enough to go and work abroad compared with two-thirds in other European countries, so we are not gaining international expertise that could enrich the UK skills base.
Many international companies look for language skills when recruiting and those with language skills tend to get the most interesting and best-paid jobs. Skill in languages is something that children of a very young age can develop and it is therefore good that language teaching is encouraged in primary schools. But it seems very unwise that it should not also be encouraged in secondary schools, thus providing continuity between primary school and university. I hope that the Government will rectify that admission.
The question then is, which languages should be taught? At the European level, French, German and Spanish are the leaders but, given increasing globalisation, and particularly the rise of China, increasing attention should be given to the study of Mandarin and other Asian languages.
There is one issue on which I have some doubts and that is whether it is good policy to include the study of Latin in the curriculum. There is no doubt that the study of Latin is a good introduction to grammar, the structure of several European languages and a wealth of classical history and art, but I remember from my own experience many years ago thinking that the time spent learning Latin could have been better spent on a modern language. Indeed, we used to say: "Latin is a language, as dead as dead can be. It killed the ancient Romans and now it's killing me". That is a trivial matter of personal experience long ago and in no
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1403
5.08 pm
Lord Lyell: My Lords, what a pleasure it is to be able to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, once again for introducing this timely debate. As we have heard and will hear a lot more, it is an important debate,
I hope that I have not bored your Lordships, let alone the noble Baroness, in the past, with my desperate inability to grasp the baser elements of science. That was until I came to your Lordships' House. My school years up to 1956 were enlivened by learning languages. Indeed, one of the prime elements in my language lessons was the housemaster or tutor of the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, who has just sat down. I remember in 1954, he put me through the elements of German, the classics of Greek and Latin and slotted me in perfectly.
The years to 1956 were enlivened by what I call the "dog jumping through the hoop" syndrome. In other words, you learnt verbs one to 33 in French. You learnt about pleonastic "ne" and what Rochefoucauld meant to say or not-I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Jay. When you finished the exams, you felt rather like the galley slave once again brought to shore; you felt safe.
I have had the enormous good fortune to spend over 40 years in your Lordships' House, and I have taken language courses, sometimes here in your Lordships' House and sometimes at a professional language school. Indeed, quite often there have been repetitive lessons from a book, but they have enabled me to take the first step in some European countries.
My mindset after leaving school was one of pure pleasure in that I discovered a world-famous daily sporting paper, L'Equipe, of which I have a copy here today. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will not tut too much; I shall not read from it, as one should not produce newspapers. But for many young schoolboys and perhaps young schoolgirls, and indeed in primary school, this may be the first step to enliven what is a set language-not just to learn like dogs jumping through hoops, but to learn terms for football, tennis or other activities in other languages. So far I have tried these particular disciplines in German and Italian, while Spanish, Portuguese and oriental languages were spared my young efforts. I had the time when I was in the Northern Ireland Office to go to huge food fairs, mainly in Europe-Cologne, Berlin, Paris and a very instructive morning in Lille. These were exhibitions and trade fairs connected with agriculture and food, my main responsibility in Northern Ireland. On every occasion I had the good luck to meet Ministers and senior officials, and my languages seemed to put me and the Northern Ireland Office in their good books. It taught me the real value of top-class, professional language training.
We have heard and will hear more that English is very much the language used all over the world, but I
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1404
I am not entirely aware of the systems of language laboratories, because I am too old to have experienced that. Learning languages was done with the aid of a book, newspapers and, as American footballers say, grinding out the yardage of proper grammar. I make a plea to the Minister to see whether she has any good news about laboratories with personal headphones. It may be a question of cost, but it would cost a good bit less than some of the traditional means we have heard about.
I conclude by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for introducing this debate and hearing me once again on my pet subject.
5.12 pm
Baroness Sherlock: I add my voice to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and pay tribute to her expertise and determination in this area. I do not share her expertise, but I was inspired to contribute to this debate by a visit to a school. I have the good fortune to live in the city of Durham, but I have discovered recently that only 38 per cent of students in our authority study a modern foreign language up to GCSE or equivalent. That is despite the fact that we have three large schools in the authority that are specialist language schools; indeed, without those three schools, it would be only 30 per cent. Last month I visited one of those three, Durham Johnston Comprehensive School, and I was hugely impressed with the staff and the students. It is a good school but, in particular, they showed what can be done if the leadership of a school sets out to tackle the problem described in this debate and tries to persuade parents as well as students of the wider value of language learning. A school that does that is up against some fairly serious odds, as it is hard to persuade students and parents of the value of language when we do not appear to value it as a society. Schools risk falling down the league tables when they choose to promote languages over other subjects perceived to be easier academically. That is a risk for a school to take. That price becomes ever higher as the base of those taking languages at GCSE becomes narrower.
Some schools are struggling to recruit experienced language teachers, and there is a noticeable gender issue, with languages being seen to be for girls-which the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has clearly discovered is not just for those still in school. Recently the head of languages in a large specialist language school told me that for the past six years he has been the only male teacher in the language department in that school. He also mentioned a school in Newcastle where, because it was a boys' school,
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1405
So what else can be done? I share the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and another colleague about the importance of the statutory framework for primary school teaching. Will the Minister say how, during the curriculum review, she might ensure that that work carries on, so that the momentum is not lost? My understanding is that the funding that goes to training those local authority advisers-the people who actually train non-specialist primary teachers to use their language skills to introduce a language-will run out in March. Can she confirm that and, if so, tell me how she might maintain that momentum while the curriculum review is taking place?
Secondly, I should like the state to find a way of supporting schools such as Durham Johnston which are trying to promote languages, by incentivising or rewarding them in some way. It should remove any disincentives in league table terms. We certainly do not want to put schools off when they are enthusiastic about languages. As other noble Lords have mentioned, GCSE examinations could do with some serious overhaul. The current, rather binary pass/fail outcome does little to encourage students to take those exams and does not recognise the range of achievements that they may have. Students may be good at speaking or reading, or reach different levels. That is something which examinations could usefully recognise and it would encourage more students to proceed.
I endorse the calls of other noble Lords for action to support language teaching in higher education. In particular, I support the call of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, asking the Minister to urge her colleagues to make sure that they directly engage with the forum led by CILT, the National Centre for Languages, set up in the wake of the Worton review. Will she look at the lead set by UCL, which now requires undergraduate entrants either to have a good GCSE in a modern language or to consider studying one when they arrive?
Languages are at risk of becoming elite subjects. Pupils at independent and grammar schools study them, many top universities teach them, but fewer other institutions do so comprehensively. I should like everyone to have that chance. I am a bad example. I studied French and German to O-level and, I confess to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, I use them almost never. I do so occasionally on holiday and in restaurants, but I very much want future generations to have the chances that I had, and I feel confident that they would make rather better use of them than I did.
5.17 pm
Baroness Benjamin: My Lords, I was going to speak in French today but was told that that may be a faux pas. So I said to myself, "C'est la vie". However, I am very glad to be speaking in this debate and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for initiating it because the subject affects children's long-term ability to communicate effectively when they go out into the big wide world. I am interested in their personal intellectual development, commercial advantages, social cohesion through the reduction of xenophobia and their awareness
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1406
I always find it intriguing how foreign politicians, business leaders, football mangers, and sportsmen and women whose first language is not English are able to answer questions and make statements in a language other than their own-and we expect them to do so. I wonder how many of us could show that same linguistic dexterity. Or would we just, in the good old British tradition, shout louder in the hope of being understood?
We should be encouraging, improving and increasing the teaching of modern languages in schools as early as possible-from primary education right through to university. Yet this year, for the first time, French, one of the most commonly taught languages in schools, slipped out of the top 10 most popular GCSE subjects. Sadly, less than one in four pupils now sits the French exam. This year's GCSE take-up figures showed the number of pupils taking French and German had virtually halved since 2002. This is a very worrying trend, and at a teachers' conference in London recently, teachers voted by 73 per cent to make languages compulsory again at GCSE level to help promote global understanding.
It seems to me that anyone with common sense can see that children who do not have the chance to learn a language will be at a disadvantage and will not be given the opportunity to experience the feelings of achievement and self esteem which come from being able to communicate in another language. For primary school children, learning a new foreign language, such as French, as part of the curriculum enhances their understanding of how languages work and of the similarities and differences between them. It can also be taught using a cross-curriculum approach. It gives children for whom English is a second language the feeling of inclusion and achievement as they are learning a new language on a level playing field. It is always wonderful to see how receptive and enthusiastic young children are when they are learning a new language using stories, games, songs, drama and speech with great enjoyment. At the age of seven, children are noticeably adept at imitating the correct pronunciation. I still remember learning my first French phrase, "Ouvrez la fenêtre", meaning, "Open the window".
However, the window of opportunity to learn the basics of language learning may be lost for some children by the time they reach the age of 11 because by then children are more set in their ways, so we need good teachers from the very beginning in those early foundation years. Teaching languages at universities is vital to this because those university students will go on to teach modern languages in our schools. At the University of Exeter, where I am chancellor, so I declare an interest, I am pleased to say that we have a postgraduate certificate in modern foreign languages programme. Many of our students go on to become heads of language departments in UK schools. We also have a primary postgraduate certificate programme that prepares about 25 students each year as language
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1407
If we are to send our children out into a global competitive world, they need to be well equipped and not to feel inadequate or to be at a disadvantage when it comes to communicating and succeeding. However, as we have heard, there are sadly still too few primary school teachers who are qualified to teach modern foreign languages to our children and start them off on that wonderful journey of exploration. So will the Minister say in winding up what the Government are doing to encourage the teaching of modern foreign languages in our primary schools today?
5.22 pm
Lord Jay of Ewelme: My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Coussins for introducing this debate. I begin by declaring an interest as chairman of the NGO Culham Languages and Sciences, which I set up to bring into the state system as an academy the European School at Culham near Oxford. I shall not go into detail, but it is a school of some 900 children between the ages of five and 18 and is the only school in the country that teaches the European Baccalaureate, which is not the same as the International Baccalaureate. That means that 18 year-old school leavers are fluent speakers of at least three languages, and when I say "fluent", I mean fluent. To sit around a table with half a dozen 17 and 18 year-olds who can speak two, three or four languages and see the prospects that are open to them is quite daunting and, to be honest, rather humbling.
When the school becomes an academy, as I hope it will, I hope that it will be able to work with other schools in the neighbourhood and, through distance learning, with schools outside the neighbourhood in order to encourage language teaching more widely. I am extremely grateful for the support I have had from the previous Government and, in particular, from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and from this Government, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on this project.
As other noble Lords have said, Britain is international. Internationalism is multilingual, and if Britain is monolingual, it will simply lose out. It is as simple as that. If a firm in the City today has a choice between the most brilliant monolingual English graduate and an equally brilliant French, German or Dutch graduate who speaks three or four languages fluently, including, of course, English, it does not require thought to know which one it will choose. Those of us who live in London, at least from time to time, and hear foreign languages spoken will know how much that is already happening. To become bilingual or trilingual by the time you leave university or indeed school, however, it is hugely important to start young. It is nothing like as effective to start learning French or German at the age of 11, 12 or 13 as it is at four or five. Like my noble friend Lord Cobbold, having spent two hours a day learning Latin from the age of eight to 15, then having had to bring my French up to scratch at six in the
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1408
Many of our private schools have got the message and are acting on it. Mandarin is increasingly taught, and rightly so. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, though, enlightened head teachers in the public sector are increasingly seeing there too how crucial it is to give priority to languages. However, they need the Government's help-they need a push to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, speaking in a debate earlier today, spoke of a new English baccalaureate that might include an ancient or a modern language. I urge the Government that there should be one compulsory modern language in this new qualification; let the ancient language be the voluntary one.
Modern language teaching and learning is not a luxury. It is essential to bring out the best in our young to equip them for life in the 21st century, and it is essential for Britain's competitiveness in a hugely competitive age.
5.27 pm
Baroness Warnock: My Lords, as the last Back-Bench speaker in this debate I have absolutely nothing new to say that has not been said before. This has been an important debate, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Coussins for introducing it and for her tireless work in supporting, and doing everything to rescue, the teaching of modern languages in schools.
It is a matter of rescue because the teaching of modern languages in the maintained sector is in a terrible condition, as the figures that we have heard show. I hope that the move towards academies, to which my noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme, has just referred, will enable enthusiastic heads not only to encourage pupils to learn modern languages but actually to insist on it, as well as, if they can, to employ Europeans to teach European languages. That is an important part of what we could do to encourage not just the learning of languages but the enjoyment of doing so.
In my experience of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, what is wrong with primary school language teaching and, where it exists, secondary school language teaching is not so much the difficulty of getting a good grade at GCSE, of which we have heard we have quite a lot, but the incredible tedium of the way that languages are taught. I can number six grandchildren who have all said to me that what they hate most about school is learning languages. There is something deeply wrong with this, because these children enjoy almost every other subject.
In order to reintroduce compulsory modern foreign languages at up to key stage 4 and possibly GCSE as well-nothing short of that would do-there needs to be a radical rethink of the syllabus for GCSE French and, doubtless, German and Spanish. There are schools that can do it. One of my children teaches at Dulwich College. She reports that the teaching of Spanish there is not only extremely successful but enormously enjoyable. People choose to do it just because it is fun.
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1409
Children generally have a great love of language. They love words, learning the derivation of words, comparing ways of saying things in one language and another, and the whole business of translation or the possibility of not being able to translate exactly from one language to another. That fascinates them. Why can we not deploy this natural enthusiasm for language, with all the purely linguistic interests of learning a modern foreign language, for all the utilitarian reasons as well?
Fundamentally, learning other languages is and can be fun; not in order to be able to go shopping, nor even to supply the nuances of business engagement, but simply because language is our greatest human ability. Not to exploit that seems to me to be madness.
I deplore the move whereby languages were no longer compulsory up to key stage 4. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I also have great hopes for the Language Ladder, which was an invention of the late Lord Dearing. In or out of school, having a way of learning language that is analogous to the way of learning music, and examining it in a way that is analogous to the associated board examinations, would be an enormous incentive. Children are pretty ambitious. They like to be able to see where they have got to, and get to the next stage and be better than somebody who is five years' younger than them. They like that kind of thing, and we should exploit that.
I greatly hope that the Minister will be able to offer some encouraging words about the Language Ladder and, more importantly, about encouraging heads and particularly new academies to branch out and find new ways of learning languages by exploiting love of languages in children.
5.32 pm
Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I, too, congratulate, the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, not only on securing this vital debate but on her persistence in championing the importance of modern languages. I also welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box this afternoon and send our best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, from these Benches.
Those of us who fret over the undeniable truth that so few of us speak any foreign language must answer some direct questions. Would our national, economic and commercial prospects be enhanced if more of us spoke French, German, Russian or Mandarin? Would we be in some way a better family of citizens, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, put it, if English was not our only tongue? Would our young people be somehow differentially smarter, more mentally agile-as the noble Lord, Lord Broers, said-and versatile if they mastered a foreign language rather than some other school or university discipline?
In preparing to answer such questions, one must confront a stark and uncomfortable reality. The technological wonders of the age have had the effect of depressing the motivation of English-speaking people to learn other languages. The internet was born of English-speaking parents. The giant brands of Amazon, eBay and Facebook all started in America, and obviously had English as their first language. The attitude is: so many of us can communicate with others, run our
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1410
On the other side, the incentives for others in the world to build their own English skills in order to prosper have never been sharper. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, pointed out, for millions English is the default second language. Therefore, psychologically and pragmatically, the drive to learn another language is, for us, naturally blunted. Of course, the question is whether leaning a foreign language would make us better people, a richer culture and a stronger society, socially and commercially. The answer has to be an emphatic yes.
I am proud of the investment that my Government made in language teaching and research but I acknowledge that there is still much more to be done, despite the marvellous job undertaken by language teachers and lecturers across our education sector. They are working in a very challenging environment and attitudes need to change. No debate on modern languages should pass without our acknowledgement, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has mentioned, of the work undertaken by our much missed friend and colleague Lord Dearing. I am sure he would, like me and other noble Lords today, have liked to ask the Government what the latest information that they can give us is on taking forward the primary curriculum in languages, given the lack of agreement between the parties immediately before the general election.
I also ask the Minister-she may well answer in writing-about universities and the Chancellor's announcement last week that there was to be a cut in overall funding to the higher education sector of 40 per cent, including an estimated 75 per cent cut in funding for undergraduate teaching. What comfort can the Minister give modern foreign languages departments in universities about their future security? New life needs to be breathed into the teaching of modern foreign languages. We need a recovery programme, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, put it, or a task force, as my noble friend Lord Harrison might put it. Are the Government up to the task?
5.38 pm
Baroness Garden of Frognal: My Lords, I am delighted to have an opportunity to contribute to this debate, although I very much regret the circumstances that have caused me to stand in for my noble friend the Minister. I shall indeed convey your Lordships' good wishes to him. We hope to see him back in his place very soon. I also thank the noble Baroness for securing this debate. I pay tribute to all the work that she has done as chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages. I know that she has been a passionate advocate of modern languages for many years. I wholeheartedly share her concern over the continuing fall in the number of students taking them.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, I wondered whether I should deliver this speech in French, but
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1411
Languages have a role not only in preparation for the world of work but in the rather more old-fashioned sense of learning being a good thing. I reassure the noble Baroness from the very start that the coalition Government are working to ensure that languages are given greater pre-eminence, following the very worrying decline in the number of pupils who have been taking them over the past 10 years or so. Over that period, the proportion of students entered for a GCSE in a modern foreign language declined from a high of nearly 79 per cent in 2000 to just 44 per cent last year. There has also been a decline in the number of A-level students taking modern languages and a fall in the number of undergraduates studying language degrees. You end up with a vicious circle whereby enthusiasts and teachers are not going back into schools to regenerate and keep the pool going.
Do languages matter? After today's debate, I think that noble Lords are in no doubt about that-yes, indeed they do. Seventy-five per cent of the world's population do not speak English. The proportion of internet usage conducted in English fell from 51 per cent to 29 per cent between 2000 and 2009. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, recounted a sad story about the lack of French among wine buffs. French was always a language that one needed to discuss wine and food; one learnt it for that reason, if for no other.
Learning another language is important to the social and economic future of the country. A number of noble Lords commented on that. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made some very pertinent remarks about businesses needing graduates with the ability to hold conversations in other languages and who understand the cultural differences between the UK and other countries. This message is being made forcefully by a range of organisations, such as the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce and expert bodies such as CILT, the National Centre for Languages. The noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, asked whether business would be enhanced by language skills. According to one estimate by the Cardiff Business School, a workforce with better language skills could allow businesses to contribute £21 billion more to the UK economy.
Various academic studies have shown that language learners show greater cognitive flexibility-as the noble Lord, Lord Broers, said, people with language skills stay mentally sharper in old age-and are better at
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1412
What can we do about this? It is clear that we have a duty to ensure that as many pupils in this country as possible have the opportunity to benefit from language learning at school and from as early an age as possible. The coalition Government are committed to achieving this. Ministers are already working on measures to ensure that languages regain their pre-eminence within the national curriculum. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, recently set out plans for an English baccalaureate, which was mentioned in the previous debate and in this one. As the noble Lord, Lord Jay, pointed out, this consists of core academic subjects, including a modern or ancient language, alongside English, mathematics, science and a humanity subject. The debate is still continuing on whether a modern or an ancient language should be compulsory. We feel that any school teaching Latin and ancient Greek would almost certainly be teaching a modern language as well. However, one may not be able to rely on that and certainly those points will be made strongly in the review.
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, will welcome the commitment to review the national curriculum, which is designed to ensure that it meets its original intended purpose as a core national entitlement organised around subject disciplines. A number of noble Lords asked about the timing. We will be announcing the remit of that review later this year, but I take this opportunity to assure noble Lords that the study of languages in primary and secondary schools will form a very important part of those plans as we move forward.
Any increase in teaching foreign languages in schools will bring additional demands in terms of language teachers and their training needs. We also need to consider whether foreign language teaching should continue in all primary schools, as noble Lords have pointed out. I welcome the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, is relaying the schemes in her university to encourage primary school teachers as regards language teaching. It was announced in June that the Rose curriculum would not be implemented, but the funding will, of course, continue for this financial year.
We must look at steps to ensure that more students study foreign languages in higher education. The noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Hannay, mentioned the concerns expressed by our colleagues in Europe about the number of British students working in EU institutions whose effectiveness and careers are limited if they lack language skills. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, who has been clear about his desire to see more UK graduates taking up such positions in Europe and using their skills and influence to the benefit of the UK, the EU and the international community. As noble Lords may be aware, in order to encourage more British students
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1413
It is encouraging that the take-up of languages among students studying for other degrees is on the rise, but we still need to do more to engage and enthuse students to study languages in more depth. The work that the noble Lord, Lord Broers, and others in universities are doing to link engineering with a foreign language is welcome and will expand the breadth of opportunities for the students who take up those programmes. We are working to increase British students' understanding of the world and its peoples through spending time abroad during the course of their studies, for example through increased UK participation in the European Commission's ERASMUS programme. I will also mention the programme at UCL referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, which insists on a modern language for undergraduates. Recently I was told by a friend that their child discovered an interest in French that they had never found before because they wanted to go to UCL to read a completely different discipline.
Modern foreign languages remain classified as both strategically important and vulnerable subjects for which additional funding has been made available to ensure their continued availability. I refer to the Routes into Languages programme that the Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, supported earlier this year with additional funding, allowing consortia of schools, colleges and universities in each English region to carry on their activities until the end of the financial year.
The decline in the number of students studying languages at university prompted the Higher Education Funding Council for England to invite Professor Michael Worton, Vice-Provost of University College, London, to undertake a review of the health of language provision
28 Oct 2010 : Column 1414
I will pick up on one or two points. Perhaps I may write to noble Lords in response to questions that I have not answered. The noble Baronesses, Lady Coussins, Lady Sharp and Lady Warnock, mentioned the Language Ladder. Funding has continued until this year. The contract is now coming to an end and we will need to consult further on it, because obviously the programme had tremendous benefits. Several noble Lords mentioned the late Lord Dearing. In a debate such as this, we all feel his legacy and pay tribute to him.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, mentioned Beaconsfield and the language skills at GCHQ. The military has had an extremely good language school at Beaconsfield for many years, teaching all sorts of exotic languages, as well as the mainstream ones. I do not know the answer to the question that the noble Lord raised and I think that it would probably be best answered by another government department. I shall try to refer it to the relevant department for an answer. However, my understanding is that TA officers certainly also receive language training if their duties require it.
My noble friend Lady Benjamin mentioned primary schools, and I think that I have already talked about the implications for those schools.
In conclusion, I repeat that the Government are absolutely committed to restoring the pre-eminence of languages within schools and higher education. I thank the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to debate this most important area once again, and I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken so persuasively this afternoon. I know that I speak on behalf of my noble friend the Minister when I say that we look forward to working closely with the noble Baroness over the coming months to ensure that the curriculum review takes full account of the arguments that have been raised during this debate.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |