Creative Teaching and Learning

Can The Collapse of Languages Learning in England Be Reversed By A New Government Strategy ?

The breath-taking decline in children learning modern foreign languages in England is costing the country billions of pounds in lost trade. Simon Sharron talks to Joe Fincham, Head of Modern Languages at Blatchington Mill School, to find out how the government plans to push the MFL boulder back up the hill.

To stem the decline in languages teaching in maintained secondary schools in England the Department for Education established The National Centre for Language Pedagogy (NCELP) as a research led programme, co-managed by The University of York and The Cam Academy Trust. It works in partnership with university researchers, teacher educators and expert practitioners, and with 18 Specialist Teachers in nine Leading Schools across the country acting as language hubs, to improve language curriculum design and pedagogy.

TeachingTimes:

Can you explain the context around the NCELP coming into being, and what are its philosophy and objectives?

Joe Fincham:

The context is, of course, the dramatic decline in Modern Languages in this country over the last decade or more. Teachingtimes illustrated the downward spiral of teaching and take-up in Modern Languages in its recent article on the huge languages skills deficit in the UK.

The British Council’s survey ‘Language Trends 2020’ reveals fewer and fewer pupils studying Modern Languages at KS4 and except for Spanish the number of GCSE and A Level exam entries for French and German has been in free fall.

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