We should say 'non' to the new plan

The Government's proposal to remove languages from the core GCSE curriculum, and to make them an 'entitlement' at primary school, is cause for concern, writes Emma Haughton

We may have a reputation for insularity as a nation, but according to a variety of opinion polls, the vast majority of us believe that foreign language skills are important. Where opinion divides is just how to get these skills, and the Government's Green Paper in February on education from 14-19 has stirred up debate with its proposal to remove languages from the core GCSE curriculum and replace them with an "entitlement" to study languages at primary school from age seven.

While all are waiting to see what the Government's November strategy will bring, many have already taken issue with its basic premise – that the record in teaching modern foreign languages has historically not been good enough.

"Statistics and inspection evidence show that GCSE results and standards generally have actually improved," says Dr Norbert Pachler, a senior lecturer in languages in education at London's Institute of Education. "One problem with the Green Paper is that it doesn't acknowledge the context in which foreign-language teachers are working – an acute lack of curriculum time, children starting languages very late, and their very low status in society. It's just not true that the problem is poor teaching."

Lid King, the director of the government-funded Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (CILT), is concerned that the proposal to remove languages from the statutory core post-14 runs counter to the process of extending language learning across all ages and sectors developed over the past 30 years.

"While I would agree that not everything can be compulsory, I would prefer to see languages left in the compulsory core until 16 – certainly until such time that a significant number of children are studying languages in primary school," he says. "While the intention to move significant language input from ages 11-16 to seven-14 makes a lot of sense, we haven't got there yet, and there is evidence that some schools are removing languages from the statutory core and making them an elective option, in competition with anything up to 20 subjects."

Dr Pachler agrees: "The Green Paper is really a retrograde step and a complete break with recent foreign-language policy. It contains a lot of talk about primary languages, but its effects are not supposed to kick in until 2012. If you start to dismantle what there is in secondary schools in the meantime, we're in danger of losing all the good work and effort of recent years."

He also believes we could return to the previous situation where languages were for an academic elite of some 20 per cent of pupils. We need to engage all learners, irrespective of abilities, but the current focus on the GCSE exam works against that. "I would fear that many, many children will give it up at 14," he says. "The problem is that the language provision being offered is so narrow. With league tables and the pressure to get good results, teachers have to do a lot of teaching for the test, and it's simply not very stimulating."

Lid King is worried that the changes may affect the number of pupils continuing foreign languages post-16 – given that there has already been a year-on-year drop since 1992 in the number of pupils taking a foreign language A-level. "The Government's argument is that if you have people choosing to continue post-14, they are more likely to carry on further. I honestly don't know if that will be the case."

We need to have a radical rethink of the curriculum, and to abandon the "tourist" approach to foreign languages, argues Dr Pachler, with young people developing language appreciation, cultural awareness and communication competence, rather than learning dialogues off by heart and reproducing them in exams.

"We should be focusing on preparing young people for life in a multilingual society, and educating them for European citizenship," says Dr Pachler. And we should also abandon the assumed goal of near-native proficiency, he believes. "There is too great a mismatch in the amount of time available and how much you need to achieve that. It's one thing in Holland, where they have access to foreign TV broadcasts and all-round exposure to other languages, but it's quite another matter here."