Primary pupils ´should learn Mandarin´

4-1-2010

Primary pupils 'should learn Mandarin'

Children should learn languages of countries where Britain has important business contacts, says Ed Balls

Primary school pupils should learn Mandarin and Arabic to help UK businesses, the government said today.

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, said UK plc increasingly needed children to learn the languages of countries where Britain had "very important business contacts".

All secondary schools should offer lessons in Mandarin, he said, citing a poll in which bosses rated the language the most useful for their employees to speak after French and German.

The government also wants Mandarin and Arabic lessons made available to primary school pupils. From next year, all primary schools must offer pupils aged seven and older lessons in a foreign language. The government said primary schools could choose from a wide range of languages, from Arabic to Mandarin and Japanese to French.

"From this year, all key stage 2 children (age seven to 11) should have the opportunity to learn a language in class time," a report by the Department for Children, Schools and Families said. "All secondary school pupils should have the opportunity to learn languages like Mandarin if they choose."

In the Confederation of British Industry's poll of 581 businesses conducted last year, 38% of bosses said they were looking for staff with Mandarin or Cantonese.

Just over half – 52% – wanted French speakers, while 43% and 28% wanted German and Spanish respectively. Mandarin would become as popular a language as French, German or Spanish, Balls predicted.

Teenagers will be able to take Mandarin as a GCSE from this year. One in seven secondary schools already offers Mandarin. Those that do not could pool resources to offer the language, Balls said.

Balls said: "In this new decade, our ties with emerging economies like China will become even more important and it's vital that young people are equipped with the skills which they need, and British businesses need too, in order to succeed in a rapidly changing world. That's why we want all secondary pupils to have the opportunity to learn up and coming languages like Mandarin if they choose, either at their own school or at a nearby school or college. In the coming years, we will see this subject sitting alongside French, Spanish and German as one of the most popular languages for young people to learn.

"There are a number of big countries which are very important in terms of business contacts for our country. This is not a pledge, but an ambition."

Take-up of modern foreign languages has tumbled since ministers made the subject optional at GCSE in 2002. The number of entries for French GCSE last summer was down 6.6%, while those for German fell by 4.2%.

Balls also announced £50m to give one-to-one tuition to children aged six and seven who are falling behind in maths and English.

From September 2011, these pupils will be entitled to help from dyslexia specialists or time on their own with a teacher.

He said: "We are saying in law that we will set out a guarantee to parents: if your child falls behind, our investment will ensure your child gets that extra help."

But David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said: "This is nothing but a headline-grabbing gimmick which will never work in practice. It is delusional to think that many children are going to benefit from Mandarin teaching when there are only a handful of such teachers in the country.

"Ed Balls would do better to tackle the collapse in mainstream language teaching in recent years. Britain is becoming a European country in which a minority of students now learn a foreign language." (Guardian)