Ministry of Defence: Arabic
(asked on 2nd February 2024) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many Arabic language specialists worked in his Department in each year since 2010.
We have deemed language specialist to be a service person holding an in date formal MOD language assessment of Level 2 and above (even if not actively using the language day to day), and any civil servant (Burnham Lecturer) or military person employed in teaching languages to defence personnel on an ongoing permanent basis or supporting operations.
Detailed historical data on those personnel ‘in date’ before 2018 is unavailable, we only know the number of exams that were passed in the respective years going back to 2012. We have not included those for the purposes of this answer. The information available is in the following table:
Serial | Language | Numbers 'in date' | Numbers 'in date' | Numbers 'in date' | Numbers 'in date' | Numbers 'in date' | Numbers 'in date' |
1 | Russian | 163 | 155 | 111 | 106 | 80 | 81 |
2 | Arabic | 99 | 117 | 121 | 132 | 187 | 196 |
3 | Farsi | 38 | 42 | 38 | 40 | 21 | 24 |
4 | Mandarin | 15 | 22 | 18 | 22 | 12 | 12 |
5 | Cantonese | 9 | With Mandarin as Chinese to mid 23 | Counted with Mandarin | Counted with Mandarin | Counted with Mandarin | Counted with Mandarin |
6 | Dari/Pashtu | 5 | 16 | 5 | 8 | 9 | 13 |