The world is more interconnected than ever before and businesses need employees who can communicate across national borders. Yet less than 10 per cent of English 15-year-olds can speak a foreign language, compared with an average of 42 per cent across 14 European countries.
The UK lags far behind other European nations in the teaching of modern foreign languages after what experts say is a “catastrophic” decline. In Denmark 99 per cent of young people can read and write in a second language. In Estonia all children learn another language up to the age of 18, using virtual reality headsets to travel around the world during lessons.
In England over the past 20 years the number taking French at GCSE has more than halved and entries in German have reduced to a third. Although there has been a rise in entries for Spanish, the drop in language learning overall has been dramatic. A vicious circle has developed in which fewer students are studying languages at university and so there are not enough language teachers being trained up for schools.
The British Council’s latest Language Trends survey found a “growing social divide” in language teaching. Three in ten pupils at private school take a language at GCSE, but only one in ten state school pupils do. There is also a gender gap, with boys consistently lagging behind girls.
The decline in language teaching raises fresh questions about the narrowness of the English curriculum and whether the education system is properly preparing children for the world of work.
Ministers have been warned that there is a very real threat to the UK’s future prosperity. One study for the former Department for Business Innovation and Skills found that deficient language skills were costing the economy the equivalent of 3.5 per cent of GDP a year by limiting potential exports.
Baroness Coussins, the former chief executive of the Portman group and chairwoman of the all-party parliamentary group on modern languages, says: “For every £1 spent on effective languages education, we get back £2 in exports and growth. Speaking English in the 21st century is vital but speaking only English is a huge disadvantage in a global labour market.”
There are also national security implications, according to Stephen Evans, a former Nato assistant secretary-general. “Linguistic ability and the cultural awareness that goes with it is crucial both to developing relations with allies and to understanding those who would do us harm,” he says. “Linguistic isolation poses serious risks. The UK’s National Security Council should consider the long-term security benefits of a revival of linguistic capability.”
Britain’s reputation abroad is suffering. Sir Anthony Seldon, the historian and head teacher of Epsom College, argues that AI translation apps are no substitute for human connection. “Only the person who can speak the language of another can truly understand that person, the situation and the country,” he says. “Machine translation gives us information and superficial knowledge, but it never gives us deep knowledge or understanding. It is essential that we keep modern languages vibrant at school and university.”
The slump in language learning dates back to 2004 when the Blair government scrapped the requirement for all pupils to take a language up to GCSE. In 1997, 82 per cent of girls and 73 per cent of boys were entered for a modern language at GCSE. By 2007 the proportion of pupils had fallen to 47 per cent.
There was a short uptick around 2012 after Michael Gove, then education secretary, included a language in the list of subjects that students must take to achieve the English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) attainment measure for schools.
In spite of this, language entries have continued to fall since 2015. At present only about 40 per cent of pupils take all the required subjects of the Ebacc and in most cases the missing subject is a modern language (the other subjects are English language and literature, maths, double science and a humanities subject).
The Department for Education recently restored full postgraduate teacher-training bursaries for languages — as recommended by The Times Education Commission, which raised concerns about the decline in its final report.
However, modern languages teachers are not eligible for the £6,000 salary boost that is available to maths, chemistry, computing and physics teachers in the first five years of their career if they are in a disadvantaged school.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, says only 34 per cent of the trainee teacher recruitment target for modern foreign languages was achieved last year and shortages remain severe. “For schools there are significant difficulties in recruiting sufficient numbers of language teachers,” he says. “We have become a nation which is more monolingual overall.”
Brexit has made it harder to recruit language teachers from the EU and the pandemic has affected foreign exchange programmes.
An Ofsted review of the languages curriculum said that learning a language “helps to equip pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life”. The schools inspectorate added, however, that the quality of teaching in primary schools was “variable” and too often teachers and textbooks focused on “ready-made sentences or short texts that satisfied exam requirements” rather than being able to communicate.
The impact on higher education has been profound. Tim Luckhurst, the former editor of The Scotsman and principal of Durham University’s South College, says: “Many of the brilliant international students who study at Durham University are flawlessly bilingual. Several of our equally brilliant British students have the same impressive skills but their numbers are dwindling and they have often learnt at excellent private or grammar schools.”
Nick Hillman, the director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, describes the decision to end compulsory languages at GCSE as “catastrophically bad”, adding: “It is scandalous that we have no more Chinese studies students than we did back in the days when China was not a global player. Just as politicians would have benefited from greater scientific knowledge during Covid, so policymakers would benefit from better understanding the rest of the world when it comes to building post-Brexit trade links.”
Rachel Sylvester was chairwoman of The Times Education Commission
