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Nick Seaton: School language teaching leaves children lost for words
AS with almost everything else they've touched in education, the present Government has made a pig's ear of foreign languages in schools.
Little over a decade ago, French, German and Spanish were mainstream subjects. Now they hover on the fringes and are, literally, non-existent in many secondary schools.
In 2002, Labour education ministers undermined the idea that all pupils, whatever their abilities and background, should be entitled to a "broad and balanced" curriculum, by announcing that foreign languages could be dropped when youngsters reach 14 years old.
With no need to study a foreign language for GCSE exams, thousands of youngsters got the message that languages are unimportant, perhaps a little difficult, and can, therefore, be ignored as a subject for serious study.
In many cases, no doubt, that perception was encouraged by their schools: easy GCSEs make it easier for under-performing schools to improve their position in the league tables.
The inevitable result has been that only around four in 10 GCSE candidates entered for a foreign language at all last year. Almost 350,000 candidates did not enter for a single language GCSE. Needless to say, entries for foreign language A-levels have followed a similar pattern.
We are now at the stage where more than half of all the top grade A-levels allocated in French and German are awarded to pupils from independent or grammar schools. The situation with Spanish is slightly better, but not much.
Even the National Union of Teachers has described the decline in foreign languages as "a complete disaster". There are moves in some schools to introduce languages such as Urdu or Mandarin Chinese, but the languages of our European neighbours have been seriously neglected.
Perhaps realising their mistake, Ministers announced in 2007 that learning a foreign language would be compulsory in primary schools by 2011. This, it was hoped, would encourage children to develop an early
love of languages, whichthey would retain as they grew older.
Now, even that idea seems doomed to failure. This week, government research by the National Foundation for Educational Research found that as many as one in four primary schools may not be ready properly to begin teaching a foreign language within the next couple of years.
Compulsory foreign languages in primary schools was always a questionable proposition. As national test results show, too many primary schools can't even teach their pupils English grammar, spelling and punctuation, let alone a foreign language.
The time devoted to essential subjects such maths, science, geography, history, art, music, PE and RE has gradually been eroded in primary schools by the national literacy and numeracy strategies (neither of which has been very effective) and preparation for the national tests, which only cover English maths and science.
Bit by bit, the timetable has become over-crowded by "non-subjects" such as citizenship, personal, social, health and (lately) economic education. Plus, of course, many hours spent "learning for oneself" on computers.
Where will it all end?
In my view, primary schools should concentrate on teaching the fundamentals well. Teaching foreign languages at this level should be optional, not part of the mainstream timetable. By all means encourage primary schools to run lunchtime, after-school or holiday courses in French, German, Spanish or whatever language they have a teacher for.
But we should return to the "broad and balanced" curriculum articulated in the 1988 Education Reform Act by ensuring that learning at least one foreign language, including some of its literary canon, is compulsory up to the age of 16.
Come to that, why can't everyone take at least one foreign language GCSE? Many won't like it, but sometimes we all have to do things we don't like.
The benefits of knowing a foreign language are incalculable. They include: general "brain training", especially for the memory;
better understanding of other races and other cultures; a wider range of useful knowledge in the worlds of work and pleasure; and, of course, a much improved ability simply to communicate with people. (Isn't there something decidedly Big Brotherish about ensuring all young people are good at communicating with computers at the expense of fundamental relationships with other human beings?)
English may be one of the world's best-known and most- used languages. But do we really want to become a nation whose people rely entirely on others' abilities to communicate in our language?
The shortage of skilled language teachers is already beginning to bite. Unless radical changes are made to what is required from schools, and soon, we shall sink further into a state of ignorant insularity.
If that happens, who can doubt that as a nation and as individuals, we shall be immeasurably poorer, both in spiritual and material terms?
Nick Seaton, from York, is chairman of the Campaign for Real Education.
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