The department is aware that some universities are making difficult decisions about their provision. As autonomous institutions, universities are free to choose which courses they deliver. While the government is supportive of language provision, we play no role in the delivery of these specific schemes.

As education is a devolved matter, it would not be appropriate for the government to comment on provision at Scottish universities.

We want to ensure that all children and young people have access to a high-quality language education. In response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, we set out our commitment to strengthen the languages pipeline, including at A level and degree.

Teacher recruitment in modern languages is kept under review. Incentives, bursaries and training reforms aim to support a sustainable pipeline, recognising that universities play an important but independent role in this.

The government continues to assess national capability needs in security, diplomacy, defence and trade, ensuring language skills requirements are understood across departments.

The department has published our plan for higher education reform through the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, which sets out our ambition for a world leading sector that supplies the skills our labour market needs.

The department is aware that some universities are making difficult decisions about their provision. As autonomous institutions, universities are free to choose which courses they deliver. While the government is supportive of language provision, we play no role in the delivery of these specific schemes.

As education is a devolved matter, it would not be appropriate for the government to comment on provision at Scottish universities.

We want to ensure that all children and young people have access to a high-quality language education. In response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, we set out our commitment to strengthen the languages pipeline, including at A level and degree.

Teacher recruitment in modern languages is kept under review. Incentives, bursaries and training reforms aim to support a sustainable pipeline, recognising that universities play an important but independent role in this.

The government continues to assess national capability needs in security, diplomacy, defence and trade, ensuring language skills requirements are understood across departments.

The department has published our plan for higher education reform through the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, which sets out our ambition for a world leading sector that supplies the skills our labour market needs.

The department is aware that some universities are making difficult decisions about their provision. As autonomous institutions, universities are free to choose which courses they deliver. While the government is supportive of language provision, we play no role in the delivery of these specific schemes.

As education is a devolved matter, it would not be appropriate for the government to comment on provision at Scottish universities.

We want to ensure that all children and young people have access to a high-quality language education. In response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, we set out our commitment to strengthen the languages pipeline, including at A level and degree.

Teacher recruitment in modern languages is kept under review. Incentives, bursaries and training reforms aim to support a sustainable pipeline, recognising that universities play an important but independent role in this.

The government continues to assess national capability needs in security, diplomacy, defence and trade, ensuring language skills requirements are understood across departments.

The department has published our plan for higher education reform through the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, which sets out our ambition for a world leading sector that supplies the skills our labour market needs.

The research was commissioned by the department in 2024 with fieldwork taking place between March and November of the same year. The attached report was published in June 2025 and is also available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-teacher-recruitment.

In our response to the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review we made a commitment to work with the sector to understand successful approaches to supporting the languages pipeline, starting at primary by reforming the curriculum, increasing take up at GCSE, and boosting demand at A level and degree level, to meet future social and economic needs.

We also want to learn from successful approaches such as the ‘Languages for All’ programme in partnership with Royal Holloway University of London, which has doubled the number of students studying modern languages at A level, through their pilot in Hounslow.

The department will support teachers to implement changes to the curriculum, though continued investment in the National Consortium for Languages Education, which provides high quality professional development and wraparound support for language teachers, with national reach.

The department is continuing to look at how best to support schools to navigate the visa sponsorship processes to ensure that high quality international teachers can train and work as teachers in England. We have dedicated, school specific guidance to support schools that would like to employ international teachers. We regularly review this guidance to ensure it provides accurate, up to date and clear information. We have tested the content with schools and continue to engage with the sector for further feedback. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/recruit-teachers-from-overseas.

The costs of sponsoring a visa are charged at the same level across professions. There are no plans to introduce any new sector-based exemptions from these costs, or to provide funding to cover the cost of any processes related to domestic or international teacher recruitment, but there are lower rates for smaller employers.

In academic year 2025/26, there were 765 UK nationals starting postgraduate initial teacher training in modern foreign languages. The department has not made any estimate of the impact of a reduction in university modern languages courses on UK national modern foreign languages trainee teachers.

All institutions will still be able offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) and receive normal funding per student supported by this government’s very significant investment into 16 to 19 education.

The base rate of funding per student has increased to £5,105 in the 2025/26 academic year, up over 5% on last year. However, to make this funding work hard, we have announced that from 2026/27 we will focus large programme uplift (LPU) funding, which is on top of the base funding, on those large programmes which include mathematics, further mathematics and other high value A levels. Other programmes, such as the IB, will no longer attract this uplift.

The department is giving transitional protection funding in the 2026/27 academic year so, for institutions that will lose a significant amount of LPU, the reduction will be spread over two years.

We recognise that the vast majority of AI systems - including machine translation - are best regulated at the point of use and in the context in which they are deployed. That’s why in response to the AI Action Plan, the government has committed to supporting regulators in evaluating their AI capabilities and understanding how these can be strengthened.

In regard to foreign language professionals, the GCHQ-chaired cross-Government Languages Group brings together government language professionals, developers and commissioning officers who have a stake in machine translation capability, to capture use cases and develop best practice for its development and deployment.

We have no current plans to make such a change to the Accessible Information Standard (AIS). The AIS aims to make sure that people who have a disability, impairment or sensory loss get information that they can access and understand. NHS England is responsible for the AIS and has completed a review as part of the revision of the standard.

Spoken and community languages are specifically excluded from the AIS and have not been included as part of its review due to the legislative basis of the AIS and its focus on meeting the needs of disabled people.

The General Medical Council’s guidance states that all possible efforts must be made to ensure effective communication with patients. This includes arrangements to meet patients’ communication needs in languages other than English. Where language is a problem in discussing health matters, NHS England and NHS Scotland’s guidance states that a professional interpreter should always be offered.

NHS England is aware of safety investigations and other issues relating to translation services and has completed a strategic review and options appraisal to identify if and how NHS England can support improvements in the commissioning and delivery of community language translation and interpretation services.

This government wants to ensure that there are excellent teachers where we need them most, and international teachers and teacher trainees make an important contribution to this, particularly in the teaching of languages.

There is no cap in place for recipients of the Languages Teacher Training Scholarship. 175 is a notional target which enables the British Council to adequately plan recruitment and resourcing to meet the target. We closely monitor recruitment throughout the year and, should it look as though the target will be exceeded, we will engage with the British Council to discuss their capacity to meet any increase in demand.

The department produces guidance for schools on recruiting teachers from overseas, which is accessible here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/recruit-teachers-from-overseas. This includes an overview on how to sponsor skilled worker visas and links to the appropriate Home Office (HO) guidance.

The government has no plans to introduce a visa waiver for language teachers. Language teachers are free to use the immigration system and should be able to obtain a skilled worker visa if they have a job offer from a school that has been approved by the HO, are able to speak, read, write and understand English, and are paid at least the minimum of the relevant teacher pay range.

Overseas nationals who relocate to England this academic year to take up a language, or physics, teaching job in a state-funded school, will still be eligible for the £10,000 International relocation payment (IRP), provided they meet the eligibility requirements. The 2024/25 academic year is the last year of a two-year pilot for the IRP. The department is currently evaluating the first year of the pilot and will make decisions on whether to offer the payment in future years in due course.

All qualified teachers in England are required to have a UK first degree or equivalent qualification. Legislation does not specify that teachers must have a degree in a particular subject or discipline and there are no statutory requirements for secondary trainee teachers to have a degree in a specified subject as long as they meet the teachers’ standards, including those that relate to subject and curriculum knowledge, by the end of their training.

Decisions relating to degree entry criteria ultimately lie with the accredited Initial Teacher Training provider to determine whether an applicant’s qualification meets the requirements. Candidates may also be eligible for subject knowledge enhancement courses to equip them with the subject knowledge required to teach languages in schools.

This government wants to ensure that there are excellent teachers where we need them most, and international teachers and teacher trainees make an important contribution to this, particularly in the teaching of languages.

There is no cap in place for recipients of the Languages Teacher Training Scholarship. 175 is a notional target which enables the British Council to adequately plan recruitment and resourcing to meet the target. We closely monitor recruitment throughout the year and, should it look as though the target will be exceeded, we will engage with the British Council to discuss their capacity to meet any increase in demand.

The department produces guidance for schools on recruiting teachers from overseas, which is accessible here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/recruit-teachers-from-overseas. This includes an overview on how to sponsor skilled worker visas and links to the appropriate Home Office (HO) guidance.

The government has no plans to introduce a visa waiver for language teachers. Language teachers are free to use the immigration system and should be able to obtain a skilled worker visa if they have a job offer from a school that has been approved by the HO, are able to speak, read, write and understand English, and are paid at least the minimum of the relevant teacher pay range.

Overseas nationals who relocate to England this academic year to take up a language, or physics, teaching job in a state-funded school, will still be eligible for the £10,000 International relocation payment (IRP), provided they meet the eligibility requirements. The 2024/25 academic year is the last year of a two-year pilot for the IRP. The department is currently evaluating the first year of the pilot and will make decisions on whether to offer the payment in future years in due course.

All qualified teachers in England are required to have a UK first degree or equivalent qualification. Legislation does not specify that teachers must have a degree in a particular subject or discipline and there are no statutory requirements for secondary trainee teachers to have a degree in a specified subject as long as they meet the teachers’ standards, including those that relate to subject and curriculum knowledge, by the end of their training.

Decisions relating to degree entry criteria ultimately lie with the accredited Initial Teacher Training provider to determine whether an applicant’s qualification meets the requirements. Candidates may also be eligible for subject knowledge enhancement courses to equip them with the subject knowledge required to teach languages in schools.

This government wants to ensure that there are excellent teachers where we need them most, and international teachers and teacher trainees make an important contribution to this, particularly in the teaching of languages.

There is no cap in place for recipients of the Languages Teacher Training Scholarship. 175 is a notional target which enables the British Council to adequately plan recruitment and resourcing to meet the target. We closely monitor recruitment throughout the year and, should it look as though the target will be exceeded, we will engage with the British Council to discuss their capacity to meet any increase in demand.

The department produces guidance for schools on recruiting teachers from overseas, which is accessible here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/recruit-teachers-from-overseas. This includes an overview on how to sponsor skilled worker visas and links to the appropriate Home Office (HO) guidance.

The government has no plans to introduce a visa waiver for language teachers. Language teachers are free to use the immigration system and should be able to obtain a skilled worker visa if they have a job offer from a school that has been approved by the HO, are able to speak, read, write and understand English, and are paid at least the minimum of the relevant teacher pay range.

Overseas nationals who relocate to England this academic year to take up a language, or physics, teaching job in a state-funded school, will still be eligible for the £10,000 International relocation payment (IRP), provided they meet the eligibility requirements. The 2024/25 academic year is the last year of a two-year pilot for the IRP. The department is currently evaluating the first year of the pilot and will make decisions on whether to offer the payment in future years in due course.

All qualified teachers in England are required to have a UK first degree or equivalent qualification. Legislation does not specify that teachers must have a degree in a particular subject or discipline and there are no statutory requirements for secondary trainee teachers to have a degree in a specified subject as long as they meet the teachers’ standards, including those that relate to subject and curriculum knowledge, by the end of their training.

Decisions relating to degree entry criteria ultimately lie with the accredited Initial Teacher Training provider to determine whether an applicant’s qualification meets the requirements. Candidates may also be eligible for subject knowledge enhancement courses to equip them with the subject knowledge required to teach languages in schools.

This government wants to ensure that there are excellent teachers where we need them most, and international teachers and teacher trainees make an important contribution to this, particularly in the teaching of languages.

There is no cap in place for recipients of the Languages Teacher Training Scholarship. 175 is a notional target which enables the British Council to adequately plan recruitment and resourcing to meet the target. We closely monitor recruitment throughout the year and, should it look as though the target will be exceeded, we will engage with the British Council to discuss their capacity to meet any increase in demand.

The department produces guidance for schools on recruiting teachers from overseas, which is accessible here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/recruit-teachers-from-overseas. This includes an overview on how to sponsor skilled worker visas and links to the appropriate Home Office (HO) guidance.

The government has no plans to introduce a visa waiver for language teachers. Language teachers are free to use the immigration system and should be able to obtain a skilled worker visa if they have a job offer from a school that has been approved by the HO, are able to speak, read, write and understand English, and are paid at least the minimum of the relevant teacher pay range.

Overseas nationals who relocate to England this academic year to take up a language, or physics, teaching job in a state-funded school, will still be eligible for the £10,000 International relocation payment (IRP), provided they meet the eligibility requirements. The 2024/25 academic year is the last year of a two-year pilot for the IRP. The department is currently evaluating the first year of the pilot and will make decisions on whether to offer the payment in future years in due course.

All qualified teachers in England are required to have a UK first degree or equivalent qualification. Legislation does not specify that teachers must have a degree in a particular subject or discipline and there are no statutory requirements for secondary trainee teachers to have a degree in a specified subject as long as they meet the teachers’ standards, including those that relate to subject and curriculum knowledge, by the end of their training.

Decisions relating to degree entry criteria ultimately lie with the accredited Initial Teacher Training provider to determine whether an applicant’s qualification meets the requirements. Candidates may also be eligible for subject knowledge enhancement courses to equip them with the subject knowledge required to teach languages in schools.

This government wants to ensure that there are excellent teachers where we need them most, and international teachers and teacher trainees make an important contribution to this, particularly in the teaching of languages.

There is no cap in place for recipients of the Languages Teacher Training Scholarship. 175 is a notional target which enables the British Council to adequately plan recruitment and resourcing to meet the target. We closely monitor recruitment throughout the year and, should it look as though the target will be exceeded, we will engage with the British Council to discuss their capacity to meet any increase in demand.

The department produces guidance for schools on recruiting teachers from overseas, which is accessible here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/recruit-teachers-from-overseas. This includes an overview on how to sponsor skilled worker visas and links to the appropriate Home Office (HO) guidance.

The government has no plans to introduce a visa waiver for language teachers. Language teachers are free to use the immigration system and should be able to obtain a skilled worker visa if they have a job offer from a school that has been approved by the HO, are able to speak, read, write and understand English, and are paid at least the minimum of the relevant teacher pay range.

Overseas nationals who relocate to England this academic year to take up a language, or physics, teaching job in a state-funded school, will still be eligible for the £10,000 International relocation payment (IRP), provided they meet the eligibility requirements. The 2024/25 academic year is the last year of a two-year pilot for the IRP. The department is currently evaluating the first year of the pilot and will make decisions on whether to offer the payment in future years in due course.

All qualified teachers in England are required to have a UK first degree or equivalent qualification. Legislation does not specify that teachers must have a degree in a particular subject or discipline and there are no statutory requirements for secondary trainee teachers to have a degree in a specified subject as long as they meet the teachers’ standards, including those that relate to subject and curriculum knowledge, by the end of their training.

Decisions relating to degree entry criteria ultimately lie with the accredited Initial Teacher Training provider to determine whether an applicant’s qualification meets the requirements. Candidates may also be eligible for subject knowledge enhancement courses to equip them with the subject knowledge required to teach languages in schools.

In the 2024/25 academic year, over half of the £1.4 billion recurrent funding to higher education providers allocated through the Strategic Priorities Grant is supporting the provision of strategically important high-cost subjects that support the NHS and wider healthcare policy and high-cost science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, for example medicine and dentistry, science, engineering. This is in recognition of the higher costs of teaching those subjects.

The department will continue to work with the Office for Students (OfS) to ensure that costs of provision are assessed. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, will issue guidance to the OfS in due course setting out her funding priorities for 2025/26.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), now part of Jisc, collects and publishes data on student enrolments across all UK higher education (HE) providers. This includes data on full person equivalents enrolled in different subject areas, categorised using the HE coding of subjects system. Counts of enrolments across all subjects from 2019/20 to 2022/23 are published in Table 52 of HESA’s Student Data, which can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-52.

Table 52 can be used to determine that there were 34,840 entrants to a HE course in ‘language and area studies’ in the 2022/23 academic year and of these, 11,245 were studying a language or culture other than English, down by 12% from 2020/21. In the absence of a clear definition of ‘modern foreign languages’, all non-English languages have been included for completeness.

Analysing the HESA student record, the department estimates that there were 4,845 courses in ‘languages and area studies’, excluding English studies, with at least one enrolment in 2022/23, down from 5,590 in 2020/21. The HESA data only includes courses where students have enrolled, so it is not possible to quantify the number of courses being offered with no enrolments.

HE providers are autonomous and independent institutions. This means they are ultimately responsible for the decisions that they make with regards to which courses they choose to deliver.