Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth on 2014-04-09.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what they are doing to support the teaching of foreign languages in schools.

Lord Nash

The new national curriculum sets out clearly what should be taught to pupils, and gives teachers the flexibility to decide how to teach it. We expect schools to identify the support that they need to prepare for the new curriculum, recognising that different schools will face different challenges.

We are allocating £350,000 to fund teaching school alliances and others to provide training on the new national curriculum for teachers of modern foreign languages in primary and secondary schools. Also, in terms of overall support for the new national curriculum, we have allocated some £1.9 million to teaching schools to lead curriculum change across and within their teaching school alliances.

To support the introduction of a compulsory foreign language at key stage 2 (ages seven to 11) from September 2014, the independent Expert Group, chaired by a leading primary headteacher, has provided links to useful resources, which are hosted on the website of the Association for Language Learning.

We are also making extensive use of social networking, including using high profile headteachers and others to raise the profile of the new curriculum, including for languages, through podcasts, webchats and blogs.