Leading article: Monoglots in a globalising world

This is not the first time we have lamented the parlous state of language-teaching in our schools, but the figures we report today expose the full gravity of what has been happening. One in three secondary schools has seen a drop of 30 per cent in the proportion of pupils taking even one foreign language at GCSE, while there are more than 40 schools where not a single pupil takes a foreign language GCSE.

The Government's decision four years ago to make language-learning voluntary for 14-16-year-olds has clearly accelerated what was already an adverse trend. School heads appear to have seized the opportunity to save money on subjects that were declining in popularity and perceived as difficult. If schools and pupils could each meet their government-set targets more easily by dropping languages, there was little incentive for them to keep languages going.

This is not the only malign effect of the Government's emphasis on targets and league tables, but it is surely one of the most short-sighted. Languages open windows on other cultures; they should be integral to any modern education in this globalising world. Employers increasingly meet their language requirements by recruiting migrants.

Predictably, perhaps, the death of language-teaching is most pronounced in inner-city schools, which face so many competing calls on their money. But the consequence is that foreign languages are becoming the exclusive preserve of the public schools and suburban secondaries. Learning French, German or even Mandarin is another privilege for the middle class. The Government has accepted a recommendation that all primary school children should learn a language from the age of seven. While this is welcome, there is no guarantee at all that the funds, or the trained teachers, are yet there to implement the policy; again it will be the inner city that misses out.

Yet the inner city has a wealth of linguistic resources that could be used much more imaginatively than they currently are. Many children in these schools do not speak English at home, yet little effort is made to develop, or reward, their competence in another language. Remedying this would be one way of tackling our insular approach to foreign languages until such time as mastering the basics of at least one foreign language becomes, as it should, a required element in the school curriculum.