Building momentum: Towards a National Language Strategy
Why do languages matter, and how can universities help to make the case for them to governments, schools, parents and pupils?
Arguably, no-one is better placed to tackle these questions than Professor Neil Kenny. As well as being Professor of French in Oxford’s Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages (and Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College), he is Lead Fellow for Languages at the British Academy.
The latter role involves overseeing the policy work carried out by the Academy. “There are many dimensions of that work, but it’s fair to say my energies are increasingly being consumed by our proposals for a National Languages Strategy,” he says.
Towards a National Language Strategy: Education and Skills is a 25-page report launched in July by the British Academy, in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Association of School and College Leaders, the British Council and Universities UK.
It aims to take a joined-up and holistic approach to language learning which is coherent across the education and skills systems. The title page is headed by Bruegel’s painting of the Tower of Babel.
The report makes many concrete policy recommendations to support and promote language learning in the UK, including:
1) An advanced languages premium.
“We are calling for a fixed sum of money to be given to schools for every student who takes languages at A-Level or equivalent in Sixth Forms with low levels of provision and take-up,” says Professor Kenny.
“This incentivization is particularly important because schools and colleges where there is a low take-up tend to be from socio-economically or regionally disadvantaged areas.” As the number of pupils taking a particular language have declined, it no longer makes financial sense for schools to continue to provide it.
“This is a short-term solution to keep things going at A-Level,” says Professor Kenny. “Once languages like German are gone from a school, it is really difficult to reinstate them.”
2) Student mentoring.
“We are asking governments, universities, and other bodies to support the wider roll-out of undergraduate student mentoring and ambassador schemes, where students go into schools and colleges to enthuse 12 and 13-year olds about languages,” he says.
“We hope it will influence their decisions when they choose their GCSEs.” Pilot schemes in Wales and elsewhere have so far had successful outcomes. Students at Oxford University take part in a similar scheme run by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. One of those students, Kate Osment, describes her experiences here.
Rolling out the strategy
Professor Kenny says stakeholders’ reactions to the strategy have been “excellent”. “We have heard from teachers at primary and secondary school and organisations representing them; higher education institutions; and other organisations that promote the learning of languages in the community,” he says. “People have been really pleased to see a strategic and coherent take on this issue.”
The next step will be dedicated to policy outreach to governments in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, while taking account of existing strategies in Scotland and Wales. The initiative has already received support from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Modern Languages, though plans for a physical launch in Westminster have been delayed by COVID-19.
A “one-stop shop” for languages
The Strategy is not focused only on government action, however. “There is deliberately a lot in the strategy that the language education community can get on with,” says Professor Kenny. “We want this to be a strategy that stands the test of time and survives even if it does not attract continuous financial support from governments.”
A key output from the Strategy will be a new web portal called Languages UK, due to launch next year. “This will be a one-stop shop for anyone interested in languages, European and non-European, whether they are teachers, students, career advisers, policymakers or people learning languages in communities,” says Professor Kenny. The portal will bring together the “enormous range of resources and initiatives that are out there,” he adds. “There is nothing of its kind at the moment.”
What can universities like Oxford do to help? As well as further developing student mentoring, Professor Kenny hopes academics will contribute resources to the Languages UK initiative. “This will help everyone because this material can be quite difficult to get to teachers, so all that should become possible using the new portal.”
He also says universities have a “really important national role” in the promotion of languages through the design of their degrees. “The more Modern Languages degrees can be made accessible to students who have done little language-learning before they apply, the better,” he says. “Otherwise we are necessarily appealing to a socially as well as numerically limited pool of applicants.” While independent schools require students to learn a language until the age of 16, in England the national curriculum does not, so many students will stop learning a language at the age of 14 or even 13.
Brexit and Covid make language learning even more urgent
Both in the report and during our interview, Professor Kenny makes a powerful and passionate case for the benefits of language-learning. The UK’s departure from the European Union only makes this more urgent. “If the UK is to renew and deepen its International and business engagement after Brexit, and its understanding of the world, languages will be essential to that,” he says.
Covid has shown the urgency, too. “Even within the UK, being able to communicate in different languages is vital, as the public health crisis has shown,” says Professor Kenny. So has disappointing UK progress on social mobility: “Language learning benefits students’ educational attainment and gives them more opportunities, so it is important that students from all backgrounds have the chance to learn them,” he says.
Allons-y
Professor Kenny also draws on his own experience. “I had no native speaker background when I started learning languages at secondary school, and I remember the moment when I realised I could read books in another language,” he says. “It opened my eyes to the world, and gave me tremendous confidence and interest in learning more about the world.”
Towards the end of our interview, he recalls his first school trip to Brittany in France. “I was amazed to be able to understand people even with my very, very basic French and I started parroting one or two phrases I heard that struck me,” he says. Can he remember one of those phrases?
“Yes. Allons-y. It means ‘let’s go’.”
As he gears up for the public launch of the Languages UK campaign next year, this seems apt.
