PRESS RELEASE: July 8, 2020
Towards a National Languages Strategy: Education and Skills
The Association for Language Learning (ALL) welcomes the proposals put forward in the new report from the British Academy and partners “Towards a National Languages Strategy: Education and Skills“ which aim to increase language uptake in both the short and medium term across all the nations of the UK.
Jane Harvey, ALL President commented: “I very much welcome the approach taken in this strategy of building on previous initiatives and aiming to involve the whole languages community.
We are delighted to see that the strategy takes up ALL’s long running campaign on the severe grading issues at GCSE and A level, which in this year’s ‘Language Trends’ report is again highlighted by teachers as one of the main reasons for students not continuing with a language.
ALL agrees with the focus on the primary curriculum and transition to secondary. At this stage we would like to draw attention to the transition toolkit recently produced by ASCL with input from ALL’s primary special interest group.
We also whole-heartedly endorse the need to provide for student mobility as is currently available under the Erasmus+ programme for staff and students and to support language specialists to come to the UK to teach by making it financially possible for them to do so.”
Professor René Koglbauer, ALL Chair, commented further: “I am delighted that it is a UK-wide strategy building on the various successes and learnings from regional strategies and initiatives, including the very successful language ambassador scheme. We welcome also the proposal of UK-wide recognition of qualifications and would strongly recommend aligning these qualifications to the European Framework of Reference for Languages to increase the validity of UK examinations globally. Moving forward it is essential that the voice of language practitioners and learners is carefully considered. Language teachers, lecturers and initial teacher educators (in schools and universities) will be essential in shaping this proposed strategy further and in its implementation.”
ENDS
Press contact:
Association for Language Learning
1A Duffield Road
Little Eaton
Derby
DE21 5DR
e: [email protected]
t: +44 (0)1332 22 77 79
w: www.all-languages.org.uk
f: https://www.facebook.com/alllanguages.org.uk
t: https://twitter.com/ALL4language
Notes to Editors:
- The Association for Language Learning (ALL): ALL is the major UK national association of teachers of foreign languages, with over 5,000 members in all sectors of education: all-languages.org.uk