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Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 91: Before Clause 71, insert the following new clause- ““AMENDMENT OF SECTION 84 OF EA 2002 In section 84 of EA 2002 (curriculum requirements for first, second and third key stages), in subsection (3)- (a) after paragraph (f) insert- ““(fa) a modern foreign language,””; (b) in paragraph (h), omit sub-paragraph (ii).”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, my noble friend Lady Sharp has asked me to apologise for forgetting to thank the Minister for the government amendments in that last group which resulted from points that we made in Committee. We are most grateful to the Government for that. I should like to say a word about Amendments Nos. 93 and 94, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. It is perhaps unfortunate that my amendment comes first; we are all very grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the important question of the role of modern foreign languages in today’s school curriculum. It might have been more desirable if she could have spoken first, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles in your Lordships' House. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, who recently set up a new all-party group on scientific research in education and learning to which I am very much looking forward, I believe we should base our education policies on high quality evidence of how children learn best. Not only that, we need to take into account when they learn best. With languages, there is a mountain of evidence that they learn best at an early age. My grandchildren learnt Chinese as they were learning to talk, at the same time that they learnt English. It was amazing to me to hear them chattering away to each other in Chinese as they played. If we want to do something about the terrible reputation we British have for languages, we need to start early. That is what Amendment No. 91 would achieve. I am aware that the Government have introduced a number of initiatives in primary schools; no doubt the Minister will tell us about some of them when he responds. I am also aware that there is a lot of good practice out there and many schools have been very creative in the way in which they have addressed the matter. One multicultural school I heard about has a language of the week, when a few children get to share their mother tongue with the rest of the school, including the teachers, for at least a few days in the year—and there are even more languages in that school than there are weeks in the year. That sort of thing helps children to get the idea that there is more than one way in which to express things. Only the other day, one of my husband’s little grandchildren looked at the television and said, ““Mummy, there’s a mochyn””. His mother, who speaks only English, was a bit puzzled until she realised that in Wales they teach Welsh to three year-olds, and Finlay was referring to the pig on the television—which in Welsh, I gather, is a mochyn. I know that there might be an objection to my amendment relating to the availability of the appropriate work force to carry out what I am seeking to do—to ensure that all children have some experience of a modern foreign language from the very first key stage. I would encourage the Government to take steps to train qualified teachers to specialise in teaching languages to very young children. But in the mean time I see no reason why teaching materials cannot be developed by qualified people for use by ordinary primary teachers. I say ““ordinary””, but I think that most primary teachers are extraordinary in the way in which they manage to get their heads around so many subjects and make them interesting and exciting for the children. They already wear a lot of hats, so one more may not be such an imposition, especially if they are working with good quality materials. Besides, I think that most teachers realise that as they are preparing children to grow up in quite a different world from the one in which I grew up, when air travel and mass emigration has made the world a much smaller place, it is essential that we get them learning languages at the best possible moment—that is, early. In addition, I would like to see schools using native speakers of other languages from the community and bringing them into primary schools. The foreign teaching assistants who work in secondary schools might also be able to contribute something. We need to be a bit imaginative and a bit flexible—and I hope that the NUT will agree with me. On the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, I am afraid that despite the fact that I am grateful to her for raising the subject I do not support her Amendment No. 93, which would make a modern foreign language compulsory at key stage 4. With the first public examinations, you need to give young people as much choice as possible and not be too prescriptive, apart from the core subjects. But the noble Baroness has kindly listened to an objection that I made when we first considered this matter—that for some children it would be better to spend the time on more English lessons. That is what her Amendment No. 94 seeks to address in part. But the provision applies to two groups: the first is those for whom English is not their mother tongue, which is the group she addresses in Amendment No. 94. The other group is of those children for whom, although English is their mother tongue, they have some difficulty with it and need extra help. The Government have rightly identified that literacy is the most basic tool and opens the door to all sorts of other learning so is the right and proper focus of many initiatives, but the noble Baroness’s Amendment No. 94 does not take those children into account. For them, it would not be appropriate to enforce a course of study of a foreign language up to public examination stage. Before I move, I pass on to your Lordships a lovely phrase that I heard only this morning from my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno. He told me that when he was in Jerusalem recently a young Arab boy said to him, ““When I have one language it opens one window on the world; when I have two languages, it opens two windows on the world””. I leave your Lordships with that thought and I beg to move.