Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps she has taken to increase participation in modern foreign languages in primary schools.

Nick Gibb

The Government is committed to the teaching of foreign languages as part of a core academic curriculum. This is why a modern or ancient language is included within the English Baccalaureate performance measure. Since September 2014, maintained primary schools in England must teach a modern or ancient foreign language to pupils at Key Stage 2 (ages 7 to 11). Schools can choose which language or languages to teach and should enable pupils to make substantial progress in one language by the end of primary school.

To support the introduction of a compulsory foreign language at Key Stage 2, the government funded nine projects across the country to provide training for primary teachers. These projects have trained hundreds of teachers and provided online resources for training thousands more teachers.

The EBacc has had a positive effect on the take up of languages in schools, with a rise in the proportion of the cohort in state-funded schools entered for a modern foreign language from 40% in pupils in 2010 to 49% in 2015.