Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of China's ambition to double its GDP in 2010 by 2020; and whether they plan to encourage more schools to introduce Chinese Mandarin into their curriculum and accelerate the increase in student entries for Chinese Mandarin GCSE.

Despite a falling percentage growth rate, China’s current growth rate still means it is adding an economy the size of Switzerland to its GDP each year. The UK has strengths in many of the areas identified as key priorities for the next phase of China’s economic transition to a ‘moderately prosperous’ society, particularly in services.

The Government is encouraging pupils to take a modern or ancient language, including Chinese Mandarin, as part of one of the academic subjects making up the English Baccalaureate at GCSE level.

In 2017 there were 3,656 pupil entries for GCSE Chinese in England, a rise of 47% since 2010/2011[1].

The Department is funding an intensive language programme which aims to see at least 5,000 pupils in England on track towards fluency in Mandarin Chinese by 2020. 14 schools participated in the Mandarin Excellence Programme in the 2016/17 academic year, and an additional 23 have joined in 2017/18. Progress test results indicate that the first cohort of almost 400 pupils are excelling when it comes to learning Mandarin Chinese. The majority of those on the programme achieved marks of 80% or higher across specially-created tests in reading, writing, listening and speaking.

[1] Subject time series tables https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/gcse-and-equivalent-results-2016-to-2017-provisional.