I think everybody agrees that language learning is a good thing. But like many ‘good things’ it needs government backing to happen. Whilst ramping up the positive rhetoric on learning languages the Conservative government has wreaked havoc in the real world.
First of all it savagely cut post-16 funding making it increasingly difficult for post-16 providers to provide a range of languages courses at A-level. As a former sixth form college principal I have watched in horror as funding to this most successful sector has been decimated by this government. Understandably, colleges have to balance their books and as funding tightened they cut enrichment languages first. But then as funding tightened more mainstream languages have come under attack.
The Tories are not content simply with attacking on a funding level, they have also unleashed a curriculum attack. It is perfectly sensible to review the post-16 curriculum, which is what the consultation paper ‘Completing GCSE, AS and A-level reform’ sets out to do.
In answer to my recent written parliamentary question about future A-level provision the minister reminded me that vocational A-levels are being withdrawn from September 2015 and that Ofqual will announce the list of A-levels that will no longer be available from September 2016 shortly.
In answer to my follow up question the government let slip what we all already know: Ofqual’s consultation states that exam boards are likely to take the opportunity to review their range of subjects. What this means is that under the cover of the government’s review the exam boards are taking the opportunity to get rid of those subjects that are not profitable for them to provide. This is being done in a chaotic, unplanned way with no oversight from the Department of Education or anyone else. For, it is not only in matters of schools structures that the Tories believe chaos is a good thing and that the market will sort things out, it is also in the matter of curriculum availability.
The subjects that are most vulnerable are those like citizenship, culture and society and, of course languages which have relatively small entry numbers. Never mind if these subjects are useful and beneficial, that is not the question. The question is whether they will profit the exam boards not whether they will serve our young people or our nation’s interests.
In the past an organisation like the Qualification and Curriculum Authority would have taken a wider view about the broader benefits and prevailed upon exam boards to share their responsibility for smaller entry subjects as part of the bargain by which they get their share of the hugely profitable core A-levels. It is a bit like the universal postal service where the urban areas subsidise the rural outreaches.
AQA has already announced it is dropping Polish, Punjabi, Hebrew, Bengali and Turkish, while OCR has confirmed it intends to drop Portuguese, Persian, Gujarati and Dutch.
Labour believes in preparing youngsters for the modern world and recognising the local strengths of different communities in doing this. Languages teaching has different strengths in different parts of the country. We should celebrate and facilitate that richness and diversity – not destroy it. Both the National Association of Head Teachersand the Confederation of British Industryrecognise that language skills will be vital to our nation’s future, and that languages like Turkish are becoming ever more important.
So I am delighted that Labour’s shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has confirmed that a Labour government will act in the nation’s interests and take steps to ensure that this richness in language opportunity remains, halting the Tories’ curriculum vandalism.
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Nic Dakin is the parliamentary candidate and former member of parliament for Scunthorpe
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