Cambridge drops foreign language entry requirement
20 March 2008
The University of Cambridge is proposing to drop the need for a GCSE foreign language as part of its admissions criteria to attract more children from state schools, reports The Guardian.
Cambridge said on 14 March that it is the only university that still insists on a core of subjects students must have studied if they want to apply for a place at one of its colleges, which includes a GCSE level A to C in a foreign language.
But from next September Cambridge wants to scrap the system and leave it up to individual departments to specify the subjects and qualifications required as part of their admissions process.
The Cambridge proposal comes five years after the government decided in 2002 that pupils no longer had to study a modern foreign language at GCSE.
However, last year the government backed recommendations from the Dearing report that from 2010 every seven-year-old in England would have to study a modern language as part of the national curriculum until the age of 14.
According to latest official figures since languages became optional for 14-year-olds the proportion of pupils taking a GCSE in a modern language has fallen from 80% to 50%, and 40 secondary schools did not offer a single pupil for GCSE in 2007.
The decision by Cambridge comes two years after University College London (UCL) announced it was changing its admissions criteria to make a modern foreign language a compulsory condition of admission in 2012.
A spokesman for UCL said the new policy was an attempt by the university to protect the teaching of modern languages in schools since the government decided to drop it as a compulsory subject at GCSE.
Read the complete article on Guardian Online.
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