Foreign language lessons for Wales from England

Feb 28 2008 by Abbie Wightwick, Western Mail

IN 2006 fewer than one in three pupils in Wales entered modern foreign language exams, compared with 68% in England, the lowest figure in more than 10 years.

Less than a quarter of our teenagers pass GCSEs in modern languages at grade C and above.

This is a situation that should have alarm bells ringing throughout our corridors of power, and the decline in pupils studying foreign languages needs to be reversed as a priority.

Wales is increasingly a part of Europe culturally, economically and politically, and our businesses and public organisations desperately need more people who can communicate in other languages.

Bearing this out is a recent survey which found that a quarter of Welsh companies would hire a candidate who can speak a second language over one who can not.

Not only is a deficiency of language skills in Wales limiting career development, but it is also hampering our ability to compete in a global market. A lack of language skills in the workplace has meant that 20% of companies in Wales have not been able to pitch for business globally.

To add insult to injury, the UK was recently ranked bottom in a league of 28 European countries in terms of our language capabilities.

I believe Wales can buck this trend if we build upon the fact that a significant proportion of our young population already has command of two languages and is therefore theoretically in a better position to learn a third or fourth language.

It is possible that bilingualism in Wales has become such a battleground that we are losing sight of the enormous benefits when it comes to learning other languages.

Research has shown that a bilingual education increases the ability to learn further languages. So while we worry about the Welsh language not being important in a “global village”, we forget that half of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual. Other minority groups such as the Finns have no such hang-ups about the global importance of their language which they use as a springboard to learn others.

The key to our language problems is rooted in our education system. Welsh is currently compulsory up to age 16 and the Welsh Assembly Government has no plans to add modern European languages to the list of compulsory subjects.

Nearly £750,000 of funding has been put into pilot projects to introduce children to languages including French and Italian at a young age, but we need to go much further than this. Modern foreign language lessons will be compulsory in England’s primary schools by 2010 and Wales should be following suit.

The earlier our young people are exposed to other languages the better, and making language study compulsory from seven to 14 will give pupils seven years to build up knowledge, confidence and experience before they are faced with their GCSE choices.

We should also look at the changing world economic picture. Asian economic growth, with China and India becoming the fastest growing global markets, creates a demand for Mandarin Chinese and Hindi, while Spanish is set to rival English as a global business language by 2050.

Include Russian and Arabic and you not only have the principal languages of the major growth economies but the potential to understand the complexities of the new geopolitical world order.

Wales needs to dramatically reassess its attitude to transferable language skills and place greater importance on language learning if the students emerging from our education system are to compete in today’s global job market, and if our businesses are to compete in the international marketplace.

We all have a role to play in changing attitudes to language learning and improving the take- up of foreign languages.

Phil Cooper is managing director of business support agency Venture Wales.