Tag Archives: modern foreign languages

What about the languages?

By Anna Pitcher | Mon 4th July 2016 - 4:03 pm

With the referendum already having had a number of impacts on the value of the pound and the political stability of the UK, what impact will it have on the education of future generations and, more specifically, regarding language education?

It seems that people forget what a huge influence the European Union has had on our workers’ rights and the contribution towards farmers, the NHS, Cornwall… this list could go on forever, but has anyone really thought about the ability for our children to learn languages? Language education is already at risk due to Nicky Morgan and the rest of the department for education, with the majority of language teachers having to teach at least two languages, with French being the main language and a number of schools not offering German or Spanish, despite Spanish growing in popularity.

According to the European Commission, the Barcelona European Council called for action “to improve the mastery of basic skills, in particular by teaching at least two foreign languages from a very early age”, yet 14% of young people still lack basic knowledge of even one language and, with A Levels of languages rapidly decreasing, it wouldn’t be a surprise if a large portion of the 14% was from the UK. Every year the news reports that the number of modern foreign languages is falling and does leaving the EU mean that this shall continue? Although the English Baccalaureate is going to be made compulsory as of September, what will leaving the EU mean for A Level or University uptake?

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged eu referendum | 3 Comments

Opinion: Answers on no more than 2 sides of A4 (part 2)

By Alex Feakes | Thu 30th December 2010 - 12:05 pm

In my earlier article, I looked at the new proposals for dealing with school exclusions set out in The Importance of Teaching schools White Paper, published by the government last month. Two other areas of concern in Paper, which otherwise contains some good ideas, relates to the curriculum changes and the measurement of schools’ performance.

Curriculum – the broad academic core

The White Paper gives some welcome attention to the breadth of the curriculum students study. Although the freedoms proposed for schools elsewhere in the paper allow them to adopt their own route, it is proposed to encourage the …