Covid-19: International Response
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I want to draw attention to the impact of Covid-19 on the British Council and, by extension, on the UK’s international influence and reputation. I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages, which is supported by the British Council.
The Government’s review last year described the British Council as fulfilling
“an important and unique role”
and as
“a world leader in its field.”
It operates in over 100 countries and employs 12,000 staff worldwide, 1,200 of them in the UK. Eighty-five per cent of its income comes from teaching and examining English, generating export earnings of £125 million a year for UK exam bodies. But the pandemic has forced 90% of its overseas teaching centres to close, shutting down its ability to generate revenue.
The range of activities and the depth of value to the UK’s global standing and soft power goes far wider than teaching English. It includes skills training for a digital future, combating gender-based violence and programmes that directly benefit UK schools, such as Connecting Classrooms, run jointly with DfID, and the language assistants scheme. All this could be at risk if the council were to fold.
I know that the FCO has already provided some extra funding and that the British Council aims to furlough around a quarter of its UK staff, but this does not come close to putting the council in a financially sustainable position post Covid. Further support is essential before the end of May to ensure that the organisation has a future. If ever there was a case for a government bailout based on enlightened self-interest, it is this. Will the Minister hold urgent talks with colleagues across government to secure the emergency funds to guarantee a future for this important and unique body?
Brexit: Foreign Language Teaching and Public Service Interpreting
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how immigration policy post-Brexit will take account of the recruitment of European Union and other foreign nationals to jobs in teaching modern foreign languages and public service interpreting.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, first, I declare my interests as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages and vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. We have a small but expert group of speakers this evening, and I would like to put it on record that many others have contacted me to say that they would have liked to take part but could not—notably the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds, who used to work as an interpreter and a GCHQ linguist.
In this short debate I will focus solely on how a future immigration regime must be finely tuned so that would-be immigrants to the UK, or people who are being specifically targeted for recruitment here to work as teachers of modern languages or as public service interpreters in our courts, police stations and health service, are not denied entry because of a salary threshold they cannot possibly meet, or because they are not regarded as sufficiently highly skilled to qualify.
We need to get this right for three big reasons. First, modern languages—already precarious throughout our education system—will suffer a body blow if schools and universities cannot recruit foreign nationals. An estimated 35% of MFL school teachers are non-UK EU nationals, with a similar proportion in the HE sector. Until we have a long-term strategy to produce enough linguists who will go into teaching, we need to be sure of the supply chain from abroad—mainly from France, Germany and Spain.
A salary threshold of £30,000, as proposed by the Migration Advisory Committee, would be a devastating barrier. The MAC acknowledged this in relation to education in general, but the problem is particularly acute for linguists. The National Association of Head Teachers said earlier this month that modern languages were among the subjects already most at risk from the drop in applications by EU nationals. The shortfall will only get worse with a salary threshold of £30,000. Government figures show that only 88% of the target number of MFL teachers were recruited in 2018, yet the demand is set to rise further, not least because of the Government’s own admirable policy that 90% of pupils should be achieving the EBacc by 2025. To do that requires them to do a language GCSE. This policy is doomed to failure unless the crisis of MFL teacher supply is urgently addressed. In the short to medium term, that cannot be done without overseas recruitment.
The salary range outside London for the first four years after qualification is £26,700 to £29,800. In the HE sector, staff need to be at spine point 28—more than half way up their pay scale—before they break the £30,000 barrier.
Classroom language assistants are also crucial for MFL in schools, and no fewer than 85% of them are currently from the EU. Many of them—the British Council estimates about 10%—are keenly recruited by their schools to convert from classroom assistant to trained teacher status. This is hugely beneficial to the MFL teacher supply chain, and would be threatened if the individuals could not meet new immigration conditions with which they would then have to comply. So I ask the Minister to give specific consideration to this point when formulating the new rules.
The second reason we must get this right is that the administration of justice and the quality of healthcare will suffer if the shortage of public service interpreters—PSIs—gets any worse. These are the people who are called out every day to police stations, courts, GP surgeries and hospitals to translate and interpret for defendants, witnesses, patients and their families. A few days ago, in answer to a Written Question I was told that the Government have “no plan currently” to alter the provisions of the EU directive which gave the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings, which was transposed into UK law in 2013. But I am slightly suspicious about that word “currently”, so I ask the Minister to state categorically tonight that after Brexit the Government will not remove or water down those rights.
Around one-third of PSIs are EU nationals and, as with teachers, we need to continue to recruit them, not just look after the ones who are already here. A salary threshold of £30,000 would be even more of a barrier for them than for teachers because most are freelance, on an average hourly rate of around £15. An interpreter working solely on jobs paying the highest rate of £20 an hour, paid for six hours a day of face-to-face interpreting and working for 48 weeks a year, would still be earning only £28,000. Many are earning far less than that. Yet their work is highly skilled, often requiring technical and specialist vocabulary, and knowledge of the justice or healthcare system. Without enough properly qualified PSIs, we would undoubtedly see more of the kinds of cases reported in the Times last week, in which unqualified so-called interpreters were used by one agency for police interviews, resulting in such unprofessional behaviour that a criminal trial collapsed. This not only affects people’s rights but results in unnecessary public expenditure if a retrial or further detention is involved.
The All-Party Group on Modern Languages heard evidence recently from police and researchers working on transnational crime. They told us that terrorism and trafficking in people, drugs and firearms are becoming ever more sophisticated and complex across borders and languages, and that without linguists the police simply cannot do their job. Languages commonly required include Farsi, Kurdish and Nepalese, as well as EU languages such as Polish and Portuguese.
The current Immigration Rules include a shortage occupations list, which has a category for secondary school teachers of maths, physics, computer science and Mandarin. I ask the Minister to amend this to cover teachers of all modern languages. We need competence in Mandarin, of course, but we also need traditional European languages more than ever. Schools have just as much trouble finding teachers for these. Will the Minister add to the shortage occupations list a new category for the professionally qualified translators and interpreters who will be working either in public services, as I mentioned, or in the private sector, where their language skills will help build export growth and competitiveness?
That brings me to the third reason for making sure that we get this right: it is in the national interest, by which I mean the economy and our capacity to play our part on the world stage through soft power, international organisations and diplomacy—in other words, everything that is often rather crudely summed up as “global Britain”. We need dramatically to boost the numbers of school leavers and graduates who can speak more than one language proficiently, yet since 2000 more than 50 universities have scrapped some or all of their modern language degrees. We must not add to this erosion by depriving the sector of the foreign nationals who make up around a third of its language staff. Lack of language skills is a serious constraint on employability; the UK loses 3.5% of GDP every year in missed contracts because of a lack of language skills in the workforce.
Language education, as I hope I have shown this evening, is currently heavily dependent on the body of teachers we are able to recruit from overseas. A strategy which could, over time, produce enough homegrown linguists must be the subject of another debate. My key message tonight is that in the short to medium term, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot as a nation if we allowed language skills to suffer by knowingly placing unnecessary obstacles in the way of some of the very people who we need most to attract to the UK to help us redefine our place in the world. Will the Minister take the opportunity to state explicitly that MFL teachers, translators and interpreters are highly skilled people who will not be screened out by any new Immigration Rules on the basis of income or a blinkered definition of what constitutes skill?
Peru: Visa Requirements
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of removing visa requirements for visitors to the United Kingdom from Peru.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as president of the Peru Support Group.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the UK keeps its visa system under regular review. Decisions on changes are always taken in the round and reflect key facets of the bilateral relationship with the country concerned. These will vary globally but often include security compliance, returns, reciprocal arrangements for UK nationals and prosperity.
Baroness Coussins
My Lords, it is encouraging to hear that there is some degree of flexibility in the visa review process, especially as most other Latin American countries do not need a visa to come to the UK. The Schengen area lifted its visa requirements for Peru in 2014, which has resulted in a huge disparity in visitor numbers, with only 4,014 Peruvians coming to Britain last year compared with over 204,000 going to the Schengen countries. Does the Minister agree that the economic disadvantage to the UK in revenue from tourism alone means that there is now every good and logical reason to lift the visa requirement for Peru, especially as we plan to expand our trade and investment links with Peru after Brexit and are promoting closer links between our universities?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, a visa regime is not a barrier to trade. We have excellent trading relationships with many countries whose citizens require a visa to come to the UK such as China, India, Turkey and the UAE. All non-EEA visitors to the UK are assessed against the same immigration rules regardless of nationality and whether there is a visa requirement. The only difference is where the assessment is actually made. I can attest to the noble Baroness that our visa service is excellent: the processing time is less than eight days, and 97% of non-settlement visa applications were decided within our standard 15-working-day processing time. To return to the noble Baroness’s original Question about whether we will think again about Peru, as I have said to her, we will keep these things under regular review. I know the Foreign Secretary has had talks with Peru on trade, unveiling several infrastructure programmes that the UK is supporting.
Household Debt
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for introducing this important debate, and I remind the House of my interest as president of the Money Advice Trust, the charity that runs National Debtline and Business Debtline. Last year, these free advice services helped 200,000 people by phone, with 1.3 million visits to their advice websites—figures which point to the scale of the UK’s household debt problem.
Levels of household debt are indeed increasing significantly, as noble Lords have already heard, with consumer credit growth at around the 10% mark, and more than £204 billion in outstanding credit card, personal loan and other balances. Of course, this paints only a small fraction of the picture, because we are talking not only about mortgages but increasingly about arrears on household bills. The proportion of calls to National Debtline about council tax arrears, for example, has risen from 14% a decade ago to 25% last year, so it is essential that any debate around household debt reflects all these problems and not just consumer credit.
Our debate this evening is on the Government’s assessment of the risks posed by household debt levels, and they are substantial. This is true in an economic sense, as the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee has warned, but it is true also in a personal sense for those struggling to cope with their finances. Debt problems can have severe consequences for relationships, employment, mental health, physical health and a person’s general well-being.
The high level of parliamentary interest in this issue is given welcome focus in the other place by the Treasury Select Committee’s new inquiry into household finances, and in this Chamber through the passage of the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill. The new single financial guidance body, working in partnership with advice charities such as Citizens Advice, the Money Advice Trust and StepChange, will be key in reducing the risk that household debt poses to people’s well-being.
The “breathing space” proposals, which have already been mentioned, are also a positive development and were discussed in detail in your Lordships’ House at the Report stage of the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill. As I said during that debate, it is essential that any breathing space scheme include public sector debts, too, such as council tax. We must get this scheme right so that the risks of household debt both to individuals and to the economy as a whole are reduced.
There are many other things that the Government could do to reduce this risk still further. I want briefly to mention just two. The first concerns the recommendations of the group of charities behind the Taking Control campaign, which seeks fundamental reform of the regulation surrounding enforcement agents—the people we used to call bailiffs—whose actions can cause significant distress and detriment to people already in a vulnerable situation. Research by the charities found that reforms passed in 2014 and intended to protect people from unfair practices in this industry have been only partially successful, and in some cases have created new problems. I urge the Government to incorporate bailiff reform of the kind advocated by the Taking Control report published in March into their wider approach to the problem of household debt and in addition to a breathing space scheme. I would be grateful if the Minister could address this specific point in his reply.
Secondly, I welcome the financial inclusion policy forum that the Government are to establish. This follows the recommendation of the Financial Exclusion Committee of this House. I would be grateful if the Minister could indicate the timetable for setting up this forum and say whether the debt advice sector will be represented on it.
Sierra Leone: Ebola
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I would like to draw attention to a group of people whose work is rarely acknowledged but who have been vital to the recovery from Ebola in Sierra Leone and elsewhere: the interpreters and translators who work alongside health professionals on both treatment and prevention. I am most grateful for information from the organisation Translators Without Borders—or TWB—which has been an essential part of the recovery in Sierra Leone. I pay warm tribute to its work. I should also declare my own interest as vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.
When Ebola took hold the initial response was painfully slow, as we have heard, and language was one of the main difficulties faced by humanitarian workers. Language is not usually seen as a priority in emergency responses and, as a result, misinformation and panic can spread quickly. Information was available mainly in English or French, but only a minority of people spoke either of these. In Sierra Leone, only 13% of women understand English. Most Sierra Leoneans, particularly in rural areas, speak Krio, Mende and Temne. This led to important knowledge gaps: 30% believed that Ebola was transmitted via mosquitoes, another 30% thought that it was an airborne disease. Four out of 10 believed that hot salt-water baths were an effective cure, so TWB developed its Words of Relief project, the first translation crisis relief network in the world. It was funded by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund and Microsoft.
Started in Kenya in January 2014, the project extended in November that year to Ebola-affected countries. It created what TWB calls “spider networks” of crisis translators. These are virtual teams of translators trained to respond rapidly to language needs. They were based around the world, in the US, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Mali, France, Switzerland, Germany and Kenya. They were recruited because they are native speakers and have strong links to the affected countries. Their language skills were vetted and they underwent high-quality, rigorous, expert online training, even ensuring that correct dialects were being used. Hundreds of Ebola-related items were translated and disseminated, including posters, videos, cartoons and maps. One of the most effective outputs was a series of simple posters that suggested ways to prevent the spread of Ebola, describing symptoms and emphasising the urgency of medical attention. Others targeted children and other carers.
However, the main problem was getting content from the aid agencies. TWB believes that this is partly because the agencies were stretched too thinly during the crisis, as well as due to a lack of incentive because the use of local languages is not one of the effectiveness measures for projects. Another major concern was illiteracy. According to UNESCO, adult literacy rates in the three most affected countries are below 48%. In TWB’s experience, priority needs to be given to audio and video material in local languages.
It is clear that a greater focus on translation is needed to help control crises such as the Ebola outbreak. Aid agencies and Governments alike need to collaborate and provide content for translation, and provide it quickly. Will the Minister take this issue back to his department and seek to establish a firm protocol, that wherever Her Majesty’s Government are involved—whether in an emergency response or their follow-up recovery programme, and whether through DfID directly or through funding the work of an NGO or an aid agency—explicit measures are built into the project to integrate language and translation work, and that evaluating the success of any intervention includes looking at the impact made by translators and interpreters?
United Nations World Humanitarian Summit
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Baroness Verma
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is right that we need to ensure that we do not miss out on the local support groups on the ground. We have a mixture of packages. There is some work that the multilaterals are better placed to do. Of course, as the right reverend Prelate said, it is also important that local-led community groups are properly supported. DfID support will be there to ensure that not only are we urging others to step up to the mark to support these local groups but we are doing that ourselves.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, when the Minister last referred to the Istanbul summit in this House, she mentioned that one of the themes on the agenda would be the protection of civilian populations. Would Her Majesty’s Government be willing to table an item on the agenda in Istanbul about the need to protect the civilian interpreters in conflict zones?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises a point that is well above my own pay grade but I will take that back to the department.
United Nations World Humanitarian Summit
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
My noble friend again addresses a real, serious issue—one we recognised when we had to deal with the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. Our ambition for the summit is one of radical change to humanitarian action. We need much more efficiency, effectiveness and accountability in our responses and the responses of others, including a much-strengthened professional humanitarian workforce.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, given what the noble Baroness said about the importance of protecting civilians in conflict, will Her Majesty’s Government think again about supporting a United Nations resolution to protect interpreters working in conflict zones, to put them on the same footing as journalists, who are already protected by such measures?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I think the noble Baroness’s question has been raised before. I am not able to respond to her at this moment. Will she allow me to write to her?
BBC World Service and British Council
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I will focus on the ways in which the World Service and the British Council need and use foreign languages. I do not question for a moment the importance of teaching and learning English around the world. However, in the 21st century, speaking only English is as much of a disadvantage as speaking no English.
I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages, whose secretariat is provided by the British Council, and as one of the vice-chairs of the British Council All-Party Group.
The World Service operates in 28 languages. Five of the language services were cut following the spending review in 2012 and others were reconfigured to reflect changing use of media. The Hindi service was one of those cut, but then reprieved—I believe because of a commercial funding partnership. I should be grateful if the Minister could clarify how the very successful Hindi service is now funded and whether it is now secure. What of other language services that were not reprieved? For example, I believe that there is no longer a service in Spanish to Cuba, or in Portuguese to Africa. Perhaps the Minister could say whether these two have been reviewed. It is the Foreign Secretary who decides whether to open or close a language service. I should like to know what the criteria are, what the process is, and who else is consulted.
The World Service plans to boost language service websites, do more multilingual programming and more translation of key TV programmes. Multilingual journalists do such a great job because they bring not only language skill but the local and cultural knowledge that goes with it. They can analyse and interpret, interview and comment, in a way that no monolingual could ever hope to. However, the pipeline of talent for multilingual journalists is in danger of drying up. The UK lags well behind our international competitors and things are getting worse. GCSE take-up has improved but there is an alarming drop at A-level. Forty-four British universities have scrapped language degrees since the year 2000. We are not taking advantage of the linguistic talent of the 4.2 million people in the UK whose first language is not English but who speak some of the languages in demand for business, diplomacy and the World Service. These include Korean, Arabic, Turkish, Mandarin, Pashto and Farsi.
The British Council plays an important part in keeping this pipeline open. It supports thousands of students every year through the Erasmus programme. It brings native speakers into UK classrooms—nearly 2,000 last year—through the language assistant scheme. Its partnership with HSBC promotes Chinese. Other schemes support school partnerships with francophone African countries to support French, and with Brazil to develop Portuguese. Despite this, only 9% of English 15 year-olds are competent in a foreign language beyond a basic level compared with 42% across 14 other countries. Languages are compulsory up to age 16 in 69% of independent schools, but in only 16% of state schools. It will be 2025 before we see the full impact of the Government’s policy on key stage 2 languages. In the mean time, a whole range of relationships, services and functions which collectively constitute the kind of soft power spearheaded by the World Service and the British Council could be unsustainable unless the Government get a grip our languages deficit.
I ask the Minister, finally, whether she will initiate a coherent cross-departmental languages strategy. The FCO has continued responsibility for the World Service language services, as well as being the department with a most excellent resource itself in the language centre, so it surely has the authority and the enlightened self-interest to take this step.
Education: Foreign Language Teaching
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure the success of mandatory foreign language teaching at Key Stage 2 from September 2014.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages, which has been pressing for some years now for foreign languages to be part of the required curriculum in primary schools. I am therefore delighted that this will finally be the case from September this year, and I congratulate the Government most warmly on this reform. It has been a long time coming, having been on the cards for September 2011 but abandoned as part of a cross-party agreement before the most recent general election. I have never gone along with the idea, promoted from 2004 onwards, that compulsory languages at key stage 2 was a sensible strategic alternative to keeping languages in the national curriculum for all until the end of key stage 4. I believe that we should have both.
The focus today is on key stage 2, and the timing is very good. With some concentrated focus and leadership from the Government, starting now, we can ensure that we will not be back here in four or five years’ time being told by the language naysayers that pupils still do not like languages, there are not enough teachers and in any case English is enough. This is not the occasion to rehearse the arguments about why languages are important; we really must take that for granted in today’s debate. Suffice it to say that in the 21st century, knowing English is vital but knowing only English is a serious drawback. Primary school is the place to start making sure that pupils in the UK are on the front foot.
I apologise in advance to the Minister for the many detailed questions I shall be asking. If he does not have time to answer them all today, I hope that he will write to me and place a copy in the Library.
We will not be starting in September with a blank sheet of paper. Some 97% of primary schools already offer some language teaching and there is some excellent practice in several parts of the country. However, the latest data from the Language Trends survey indicate a wide variation in practice. Many schools treat their provision as a very lightweight introduction to a new language and concentrate solely on oral skills. Around one-third of schools say that they neither monitor nor assess pupils’ progress. Schools are not confident about the more rigorous aspects of language teaching.
There are five issues that need urgent attention from the Government if the new policy is to be a success overall, not just in small patches. I will address each of them in turn. They are guidance, support and training; teacher supply; measuring progress and continuity; capitalising on home languages; and the role of Ofsted.
First, the survey reveals a high level of dependence on outside support. However, there are real problems with schools’ access to that support and training. Official guidance barely exists. The new documentation for schools has only three pages outlining the purpose of study, attainment targets and subject content in modern languages. That compares with 88 pages for English. Surely that sends a message to schools about the level of importance attached to studying a foreign language.
The DfE says that schools should seek advice and support in preparation for key stage 2 languages, but does not actually provide any support or indeed guidance on how to find it. What is being done, and what more can be done, to ensure that schools have access to the support and training that they need? In particular, will the Government facilitate training for the new programme of study? Without further guidance on the intended outcomes of key stage 2 languages, it is also very difficult to know how much time to give to the subject in the timetable. England provides one of the lowest amounts of teaching time to modern languages in both primary and secondary schools of all the OECD countries. The current typical offer is one 30-minute lesson a week, and while that might be valuable in itself it is unlikely to lead to any measurable level of competence by the end of key stage 2.
The second big issue is teacher supply. How will the Government ensure that enough primary school teachers are trained to teach a language, bearing in mind that this becomes compulsory in only a few months’ time? What opportunities will there be for teachers to spend time in a country where the language they are teaching is spoken? Given the shortage of suitably trained teachers, what advice will the Government be giving to schools on the use of unqualified speakers of a given language who, perhaps with the appropriate training, might assist schools with their language provision?
The Minister might be interested in the case study of the Al-Noor primary school, an independent Muslim school in east London hoping to become voluntary aided. The pupils, none of whom are native Arabic speakers, start to learn Arabic in reception class and by year 6 have reached a level judged to be equivalent to GCSE. The teacher is not a native Arabic speaker either, although he is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer. However, he does not have QTS because the assessment-only route to QTS is not available, as I understand it, in languages. Is there any modification of the QTS process that the Government could make to improve the supply of qualified language teachers?
The third issue is measuring progress and achieving continuity. There is currently no guidance on the level to be achieved at the end of key stage 2 or how it is to be measured. Other countries use the Common European Framework of Reference, or a version thereof, which is adapted to measure the progress of young children. Without a national system of measurement, there is a danger that schools will adopt a minimalist approach that will not provide a secure or consistent enough basis for secondary schools to build on in the same way as they do for maths, English and science. Without this, year 7 pupils will all too often find themselves starting from scratch again in languages, which leads to boredom, demoralisation and a reluctance to continue languages after key stage 3. Will the Government therefore introduce a formal assessment measure? Will they set a defined level of achievement for pupils to reach at the end of key stage 2?
The Language Trends survey revealed that 60% of primary schools have no contacts on languages with their local secondary schools. The issue of continuity is often just dismissed as too complex to deal with, yet the national curriculum requires that key stage 3 should build on key stage 2. The need for a proper system to record pupil progress and pass this information on to secondary schools is key to the success of language teaching at key stage 2 and, indeed, throughout statutory schooling.
Crucially, will the Government ensure that a national recording mechanism is introduced to facilitate information transfer and also to provide data that would enable local, national and international comparisons to be made? The London Borough of Hackney and other school partnerships offer one example of an approach to achieving continuity, by having all schools, both primary and secondary, agree on which language is taught at key stage 2. Will the Government provide a strong steer to encourage schools to work together in this way?
The fourth issue that I flagged up is the value of home languages. One in six primary school pupils does not have English as their first language. We should recognise this linguistic capital as a significant asset. The Government’s decision to remove the list of seven languages allows primary schools the freedom to develop home languages as well as to introduce a new one. The challenge is how to recognise and accredit home languages now that the Asset system has been withdrawn. What will the department can do to make the Government more aware of the potential importance of the rich range of languages spoken in the UK for economic growth, national security and international diplomacy? Without the Asset scheme, how do the Government intend to support and develop higher levels of literacy in home and community languages?
Lastly, I want to say a few words about the importance of Ofsted inspections, which will play a critical role in measuring the successful implementation of this policy, as well as encouraging primary schools to take the reform seriously. To what extent will the inspection of language provision be part of Ofsted inspections from September 2014, and will the Minister assure noble Lords that full account of the new policy on key stage 2 languages will be taken in inspection visits and that it will form a part of all inspection reports?
I am excited about this new policy, but I ask the Government to pay urgent attention to the various gaps in the system that I have described, in order to prevent the policy from backfiring in practice.
Universities: Impact of Government Policy
Baroness Coussins Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Coussins
My Lords, I want to draw attention to the impact of government policy on the provision of modern language degrees, and I declare an interest as the chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages. There might at long last be a glimmer of hope that the Government have grasped just how detrimental it would be to allow the teaching and learning of foreign languages to disappear. I warmly welcome the announcement last month by the Foreign Secretary that the decline of language teaching in the Foreign Office would be reversed. As well as reopening the Foreign Office’s language centre and a 30 per cent increase in spending on language teaching, he announced an increase in the number of jobs overseas for which language skills will be an absolute requirement.
In the business world, too, language skills are increasingly required, but UK-educated graduates are finding themselves at a disadvantage in a global labour market alongside their peers from other countries where graduates are more likely to be able to work in two or three languages, including English. Over 70 per cent of UK employers say that they are not happy with the foreign language skills of our graduates and are being forced increasingly to recruit from overseas.
This year, only 1.5 per cent of the 51,000 applicants for EU jobs in Brussels were British, and the obvious explanation is that they simply do not possess the required working knowledge of a second language. The review of university funding carried out by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, concluded that languages should be a strategic priority for public investment. Yet the changes in the funding system threaten the survival of modern languages degrees at just the time when we need to safeguard and strengthen them. Several universities have already cut back or scrapped language courses, including the University of Westminster, which has scrapped its flagship MA in conference interpreting, which had been a key recruitment ground for the native English speakers sought after by the EU and the United Nations. There is a desperate shortage of native English speakers in these services, and I would like to know what support the Government can offer to British students who wish to train as interpreters and translators.
At undergraduate level, the funding problem relates partly to the fact that language degrees are four-year courses, including a year abroad. Without this year, the quality and value of a modern language degree would be severely undermined. My understanding is that the fee waiver to universities for students taking their year abroad will continue for students who started their course in 2011 or earlier, but that after that there is currently no fee compensation built into the plans. Will the Minister review this situation as a matter of urgency, with a view to reassuring universities and prospective students that the fee waiver for the year abroad will remain? Will she also confirm that the specialist PGCE course for language teachers will continue to include funded teaching practice in a foreign country?
Languages, along with the STEM subjects, are defined as strategically important and vulnerable and, as such, receive some additional support, for example through the funding of the routes into languages programmes and the language-based area studies programme. Will the Minister say whether this additional support will continue and how the Government intend to develop their support for languages, given their status as SIV subjects?
Finally, and despite the fact that the Minister is replying today as BIS Minister, I want to draw attention to the important impact that government policy on the school curriculum has on universities, and to ask the Minister whether she will undertake to speak with her colleagues in the Department for Education about the place of modern languages in the national curriculum. Universities cannot produce sufficient numbers of linguists unless schools are producing enough pupils with a language GCSE and A-level. Numbers here are in serious decline. The English bacc has boosted languages in year 9 to a very modest extent, but we will not see the level of improvement we need unless the Government reverse the current disastrous policy whereby languages after key stage 3 are optional.
Restoring modern languages to the core part of the national curriculum until the age of 16, which I hasten to add is not the same thing as forcing every child to do a GCSE in a language, is also important for social mobility because it is, of course, only in state schools that there is such a dramatic decline in modern languages. This is a very good example of how what goes on in schools has a significant impact on what goes on in universities. About a quarter of those applying to do language degrees are from independent schools compared with only about 9 per cent across all subjects. Can the Minister reassure me that she will set up early and focused discussions between her department and the DfE on the way in which language policies across the school and university sectors can be consistent and integrated?