BILINGUAL children in the UK are far more likely to get top-grade passes in exams in all subjects, a report has found.
The report, "Positively Plurilingual", was published by Cilt, the UK's national centre for languages.
The study of secondary students in London showed that those who were encouraged to continue studying their native language were five times as likely to achieve top A to C grade passes at the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE).
The study also found that 11-year-old students in Hackney, London, who speak more than one language at home were outperforming pupils who only speak English, even in reading, in their national curriculum tests.
Trevor McDonald led a major inquiry into the teaching of languages in schools. He is now Cilt's patron. In an introduction to the report, McDonald says too many schools miss out on the opportunity to ensure that bilingual pupils develop their skills in languages other than English. "Rather than thinking in terms of an 'English-only' culture, we should be promoting 'English-plus'," McDonald says. "We know that children are capable of acquiring more than one language and that doing so brings a range of educational benefits, including cognitive advantages, enhanced communication skills and an openness to different cultural perspectives."
The report cites research by Ellen Bailystock of York University in Canada. It showed that bilingual people were better at multi-tasking than those who only speak one language.
The Cilt report says that more than one in eight primary school pupils in the UK about 850,000 children speak a language other than English at home. "People who already speak more than one language find it easier to learn new languages than monolinguals," it adds.
The report gives several examples of UK schools that take advantage of the ethnic diversity of their children. For example, Newbury Park primary school in Redbridge, east London, adopts a different "language of the month", so the pupils get a grounding in all of the 44 languages spoken at the school.
"The linguistic map of the UK is changing," concludes the report. "The number of languages in use is growing and diversity is spreading to parts of the country where previously few languages other than English were spoken."
According to another Cilt report, in the majority of UK state schools, fewer than half the pupils chose to learn a language beyond the age of 14. More than 80 per cent of schools are ignoring an emergency Government edict aimed at limiting the decline in language study.
