New research shows primary languages on the rise
3 July 2008
New research published by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has demonstrated a great increase in the number of primary schools teaching foreign languages to children. The report, published on Thursday, showed that 84% of English primaries now teach a foreign language, up from 70% on the previous year and nearly double the 44% in 2002.
This year’s Survey of Language Learning Provision at Key Stage 2 shows that traditional languages still dominate, with French being most popular (89% of schools which teach languages) followed by Spanish (23%) and German (9%). A small number of schools (under 3%) offer community languages, including Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Urdu.
The report suggests that language teaching is on track to become available to all primary pupils by 2010, as recommended by Lord Dearing in his 2007 Languages Review.
Teresa Tinsley, Director of Communications at CILT, the National Centre for Languages, said:
‘This is really good news. We were picking up that more schools were coming on board. There is a lot of demand for our support for training. It's an amazing, rapid development.’
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