We need to find new ways to express the importance of learning languages, writes Professor Nigel Vincent
At the British Academy last week we released a report called Languages: State of the Nation. It analyses the worrying state of the current demand and supply of language skills in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and is the latest in a series of reports and position papers we have dedicated in recent years to the declining status of languages in our schools and universities. The aim of all our work is to drive home the message that languages are vital for the health and wellbeing of the education and research base, for UK business competitiveness and political standing, and for individuals and society at large.
The report draws on new data from a survey of UK employers and Labour Market Intelligence and demonstrates how we are suffering from a growing deficit in foreign language skills just at a time when the global demand for language skills is expanding. Worse still, in the words of the report, we are trapped in a "vicious circle of monolingualism". Employers respond to the weak supply of these skills in one of two ways. The first is to realign their market, choosing to deal only with those who speak English, and therefore remove language requirements from their job adverts. Alternatively, if they are really pushed, they train existing staff with language skills or hire native speakers. Either way there are no market incentives for learners and little pressure on government to prioritise these skills.
Luckily, it's not all bad news. We can and should celebrate the diversity in our schoolchildren, as well as in our world-leading educational institutions. There is a plentiful supply of multilingual skills in UK society – one in six school children in England speak a foreign language as a mother tongue. Census data released just last month confirm just how plentiful this resource is in the UK. More must to be done to unlock this talent. We need to ensure that our education system enables and enhances the UK's aspirations for growth and global influence. Demand already exceeds our current capacity.
And we must make sure that the right messages are getting through to children in schools if we are to bridge the gap between the education and employment sectors.
We need too to ensure that, whatever the precise form the English Baccalaureate Certificates or its successor takes, languages have a prominent place as disciplines within that scheme, whether those are the major European languages traditionally taught in our schools or languages like Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi and Indonesian that will surely have an ever increasing presence in the world today's children will live and work in. And we must reverse the disturbing trend for those languages to become the preserve of the fee-paying schools and Russell Group universities.
Last week we launched our second year of Schools Language Awards. The awards aim to encourage excellence in language learning in schools throughout the UK. Applicants from both mainstream and supplementary schools are invited to demonstrate innovative and attainable plans for improving take-up and enthusiasm for language learning beyond the age of 16.
The 2012 National Winner, Dallam School, impressed the judging panel with its bilingual groups in years 7, 8 and 9, where PSHE and various humanities lessons are run entirely in another language. This ensures that students get extra exposure to that language on a day-to-day basis, including daily routines and informal banter in these busy, mixed ability groups. This is supplemented by bilingual activities such as Europe and international days, adventure learning, spelling bees, film studies, French cookery days, visiting and exchange opportunities to countries and extra time with foreign language assistants.
In short, we need a new strategic approach to stimulate both demand and supply. We must find better ways of identifying and expressing the need for languages. But we are not starting from scratch. Our greatest challenge lies in building on the firm foundations that already exist in our society so that we can respond to the opportunities that the future holds.
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Professor Nigel Vincent is vice president at The British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences.