---

Dept for Education and Skills

Answer

Mr. Willis: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, what steps have been taken to recruit foreign language teachers for primary schools. [202909] Mr. Miliband: There has been considerable progress on the development of language learning in primary schools, underpinned by the launch in December 2002 of the Government's National Languages Strategy for England. The Strategy recognises the importance of developing a workforce to implement primary language learning, and much of our work to date has focussed on this area. In developing a school workforce, we are building up a cadre of both specialist teachers and non-teacher specialists to support primary language learning. 580 places have been allocated this year for Primary Initial Teacher Training with a specialism in French, German, Spanish or Italian, and we intend to expand this programme further next year. This means that over 1,200 teacher trainees will have been trained by the end of this year. In addition we have allocated 50 primary MFL places a year to the Graduate Teacher Programme. For existing teachers, we have funded primary MFL Advanced Skills Teacher posts and are working with the TTA to develop and pilot CPD courses for existing primary teachers to enhance language skills and MFL pedagogy. For non-teacher specialists, we are working with the British Council to extend the foreign language assistants programme into primary schools, and are developing training for teaching assistants to support primary language learning.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

202909; 428 c770-1W

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Languages Recruitment Primary education Teachers

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk