LATEST UK official figures showed the number of teenagers studying European languages had slumped to below 50 percent, the Guardian has reported.
According to the figures obtained in a parliamentary written answer by the Liberal Democrats, the decline came after the UK government made modern languages optional for pupils over 14 in 2004.
Only 48.3 percent of 16-year-olds at UK secondary schools took a GCSE (General certificate Secondary Education) this year in French, German or Spanish. The true percentages may be much lower because the figures failed to recognize those pupils who were studying more than one language. Besides, fewer than three percent of teenagers were studying “world” languages such as Mandarin — a lower rate than 15 years ago. Spanish was the only language to have witnessed a revival. Experts put the rise down to the continued attraction of Spain as a holiday destination as well as growing interest in South America.
David Laws, Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, accused Labor of presiding over the destruction of modern language teaching. “The government should never have stopped the compulsory teaching of languages to GCSE level until it had boosted language teaching in primary schools,” Laws said. The decline in languages has also been put down to the perceived difficulty of the subjects. John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, called for languages to be made easier to bring them “into line with other subjects”.
One way in which the UK government hopes to revive interest is by offering new diplomas in languages.
