Schools: Foreign Languages

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Baroness about the importance of the matter. More than 1,800 places for modern language teacher trainees are allocated for 2015-16, which is an increase of 4%. As I say, we have substantially increased the bursaries, which were brought in for language teachers by this Government.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, for how many of our secondary and primary school pupils is English a second language, and is the Minister confident that we have sufficiently able teachers of English to make sure that, when children leave primary schools and go on to secondary school, they are fluent in the English language?

[Lord Nash]

We are very focused on increasing the quality of literacy in this country. Our phonics programme is now acknowledged to have been a substantial success. We have focused the national curriculum, particularly in primary schools, much more on language skills.