The Government has sent out the message loud and clear to young people - and to those who run their schools and teach in them - that language learning is a frill, an optional extra to education.
That is the verdict of the Nuffield Languages Inquiry team on the proposal in the 14-19 Green Paper to relegate languages to a voluntary activity after the age of 14. The Nuffield team, led by Sir Trevor McDonald, considers that this would be a retrograde step and a major setback to foreign language learning in this country. It would have a seriously damaging effect on national competitiveness and on the overall education levels of our children as they seek employment. The UK would fall even further behind our European and international competitors.
The proposal is wholly incompatible with the Government's stated commitment to developing a coherent strategy for language learning running from primary school through to university and adult life. It is equally incompatible with a vision of a world-class education system. It is insular in its thinking, coming as it does two months after the European Commission Task Force on Skills and Mobility reported on opening up the EU labour market and recommended that all pupils should master at least two EU languages in addition to their own by the end of their compulsory education.
Introducing flexibility and relevance into the curriculum of young people is a worthy objective, with which the Nuffield team is in complete agreement - but not at the expense of handicapping large numbers of those young people in a recruitment market which is no longer confined within national boundaries.
Flexibility and a statutory provision are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to build languages into the 14-19 curriculum in ways appropriate to pupils' needs, including pupils on vocational courses. What credibility will a certificate in tourism or business have in the 21st century without a language element? Why should young people have to play 'catch-up' by joining remedial courses in university in order to equip themselves with a fraction of the language competence of their counterparts elsewhere in Europe?
Nuffield believes that removing languages from the core curriculum and limiting statutory provision to three years would take language education even further backwards from the present inadequate position. Estelle Morris speaks of pupils 'plodding through' subjects which no longer interest them. She forgets that many hundreds of thousands of pupils are currently achieving good grades in GCSE languages. How many of them will be tempted away by softer options? A system in which our 13-year-olds have a free choice as to whether to continue learning a language is likely to result in a generation of experts in the soft options. Talent will be wasted. The mismatch between children's learning and national needs will get ever wider.
Reducing the status and take-up of languages for teenagers would not be compensated by the introduction of an entitlement for primary school children to learn a language, as set out in the Annexe to the Green Paper. 'Entitlement' is a term wide open to local interpretation - and known to be open to interpretation. The Green Paper does not say how much language teaching primary children would be 'entitled' to. Neither does it offer evidence that (possibly minimal) exposure to languages at primary school will enthuse pupils so much that it will no longer be necessary to make languages compulsory beyond 14.
Furthermore, the primary entitlement is unlikely to be deliverable before 2012 - which would mean that the first national cohort of enthused linguists would reach the age of 14 in 2019. It looks likely that languages will be removed from the core curriculum well before that time, possibly by 2003. This leaves a 16 year gap - a lost generation. Is the Government about to jettison the language learning requirement for a whole generation?
If the proposals in the Green Paper are accepted, many of the next generation will learn a language for three years only. We will be signing the death warrant for university language departments and the future supply of language teachers, both already in crisis. This manifestly does not tally with a strategic consideration of the UK's needs for languages. It is wholly at odds with the government's declared aspirations for languages. So where is the joined-up thinking advocated two years ago by the Nuffield Inquiry?
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Write to:
Nuffield Languages Programme
Nuffield Foundation
28 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3EG
Tel: +44 (0)207 681 9624
Fax: +44 (0)207 323 4877
Email: nuflang@nuffieldfoundation.org
