to think this government hasn't got a clue about education- why should all children be made to take MFL at GCSE?

[LuluJakey1]

What is it with the ill-thought out education ideas this government has? Why should every child take a GCSE in MFL? It is not something many children enjoy or feel has relevance to them.

Why should a school not be able to be outstanding if it does not make all students take a GCSE in MFL?

Are you a union rep?

I'm just noticing a pattern from that quarter, where the government has an EXCELLENT IDEA of how to improve education, something that many actual teachers are crying out for, that has basically no downside, but somehow it is literally worse than Hitler according to union types.

Can't be arsed to read the rest of the thread, but presumably you start banging on about Gove at some point.

At my kids' school (not in Uk - follows ib curriculum ), langauges are compulsory from yr1 all the way to graduation. They start with French or Spanish, lesson almost every say, and then add the other in year 8 and they can drop one in high school or change to other langauges.

I think it's great that they start so young. It's only songs and fun stuff with the little ones but my 8 year old has picked up the accent. The 11 year old can hold simple conversations.

The key is the quality and commitment. It can be done, and if done well, will be of huge benefit. If it's just a tick box exercise then it'll be a waste of eveyone's time.

whatis why try to make this party political? I wouldn't vote for the current version of the Tory party in a million years but I agree with making a MFL compulsory for all students.

If languages are well taught with an emphasis on oral communication then they are accessible to everyone.

It seems to me that part of the issue is the UK system of studying a GCSE course for 3 years and then dropping at least half of the subjects in one fell swoop at 16. It puts all the emphasis on an exam pass rather than on the broader idea of "education". I think the continental system, which usually involves teaching a language over a long period (theoretically 11 years in France for example) without an excessive exam focus is much better in this respect.

I think other countries have a bigger incentive to learn english, immersion is much more acessible for kids - it holds to key to so many popular pleasures from disney for small kids to hollywood blockbusters. Not forgetting the music industry's massive appeal and because learning english holds the key to these easy pleasures it has an easily sellable incentive. And english is an essential language to do business in when communicating across the world. It's not surprising native english language speaking don't make a bigger effort to learning another language, there is less need.

At school languages were not my strength, so i gave them up. I am now learning through self study, I no longer have to be really good at it, I'm good enough, I don't need or want an A at GCSE. Exams suck the joy out of learning. I want to be able to communicate well, i can take as long as i need on any topic.
Agree that the problem with MFL at school was the method of teaching it was all about memorising when i was at school, totally dull - immersion is the key. If you can't travel abroad the internet holds the key for language partnerships - communicating with a native speaker, through chat rooms and skype. They want to learn english you want to learn their language it's win wi. I'm sure schools could set this up.
Learning a language has it's drudge but it's a living, breathing tool for communicating with other people - we don't do that early enough. You don't need to be that good or that experienced to give having a chat a go and not with the teacher!.....immersion needs to be started earlier in language learning because without it learning a mfl is completely irrelevant. Through my language learning I have entered a world where people obsessively learn language after language - and the biggest message they promote is to start speaking to a native speaker almost as soon as you start learning, expect to make loads of mistakes and expect to embarass yourself but the rewards come quickly, language becomes relevent, useful and fun.

Loafline you're making the very British assumption that all foreign schools teach English as their main foreign language.

In practice many continental European schools teach more than one MFL, and many students choose a language other than English as their first foreign language (for eg my daughter's new school specializes in Spanish).

I think you make a good point about the inhibiting effect of "having to be really good at it" and studying languages just to pass exams. In my experience of a school that teaches MFL without an exam hurdle at the end, it's not always the most academic kids who are best at languages.

They can't mean ALL children.

We need to study how it is that English is taught so successfully in other countries. I suspect one advantage they have is that English tends to be seen as the automatic option, whereas there are a number of courses here; a primary school near me, for instance, teaches Italian but the reality is that few if any of the local secondary schools offer it.

Maybe not Misti but i do know that while i studied abroad - lectures in my subject were given in English and students from all over Europe attended and studied in English. Some took our subject in the host's language but even then textbooks/reading material for all students, regardless of language ability were in English, it simply was not econmical to translate these books.

I was able to avoid foreign languages at GCSE level - they were compulsory at my school (and this was back in the very earliest days of GCSE), but as I'd scored an impressive 12% in French, and Geography was keen to get me on board a rapid post-options change was made. My school experience suddenly changed for the better. So, from my personal perspective, I'd be very loathe to see languages as compulsory at GCSE level. Rather hypocritically, I do think English and Maths.

But I do think the issue of languages at primary school is important. My two eldest dc were 'taught' French at their primary school. They both loathed it, and both believed that they were useless at it (using my language prowess as evidence ). I pointed out that, unless medical science is more advanced than I realised, they weren't my clones, so my academic history was irrelevant. Both are on the G & T list for MFL at their grammar schools.

I don't know what went wrong with languages at their primary school - but I suspect it was simply very poor teaching. This isn't really a criticism of their teachers. I really believe that foreign languages are something that needs specialist teaching - a GCSE from a couple of decades ago is never going to cut it. If foreign languages are to be taught properly at KS1/KS2 properly qualified language teachers are essential. Anything else risks turning children off languages at primary school - and once children are turned off, it's much harder to switch them on again.

• First paragraph should end: 'Rather hypocritically, I do think English and Maths need to be taken to GCSE level.'

If a fluent, native like speaker were to be in a position to teach young children a MFL in a naturalistic, interactive style in primaries, I would be all for it at this level. Having a primary teacher without that proficiency teaching it seems a waste of time. This happens here in Ireland with Irish. Some teachers are fantastic because their basic Irish skills are solid and some are in immersion environments where it is a living language to them. Others only have a few functional words and sentence structures in reality, regardless of how well they did at university in the exams and topics on Irish language teaching. A non-fluent teacher does not make for a good language learning experience.

Can't believe the negative attitude to learning foreign languages, seems v strange. Unbelievable in fact. While maybe the teaching of language is really poor in UK, the negativity of most posters is astonishing.

Any negativity is about universal compulsion to study MFL, as well as some moaning about primary school weak teaching.
I have (equivalent of) lots of MFL qualifications, I love other languages. But not right for everyone.

The requirement for 1 MFL at Standard Grade/Intermediate 2/whatever it's called now (GCSE equivalent) in Scotland wasn't brought in by the SNP! It's been the case for decades!

I agree with pp who said that a science is compulsory too and no one seems to make much fuss about that. I think human biology ought to be compulsory (have a highly intelligent friend who wasn't very interested in science, and picked Chemistry as she had to do one. She honestly believes that you can determine the sex of your children by eating red meat for a boy and dairy for a girl) but apart from that I don't see why you have to take science.

I would rather have music and art as compulsory subjects instead of science and language but hey ho...

All students should have the opportunity to do GCSE languages and it should certainly be core in ks2/3.

It should be available as an option in ks4
It should be a choice at GCSE.

Stop voting Tory people. Otherwise you get daft decisions in education. They have a different perspective from their own generally public education system where students are academically selected so few have Sen and would do well at languages

Ds is first year of junior school, where he has supposed to have been taught french for the last year. The teacher informed us that she didn't have time to fit it in...
I did French and German to O level, and have worked on some of the sounds needed for German with DS since he was a toddler. We read children's language books, etc. I am under no illusions he will be fluent at the age of 18.

And as for the computer coding they are also meant to do, they haven't touched it. I have had his do the hour of code a couple of times, just as a starter.

I wonder if European studies incorporating language awareness would be more useful than mfl. Will the emphasis change if the Euro referendum vote is NO?
Interesting that we are not discussing Arabic or Urdu etc etc.

I was forced to learn french at school. It was the only subject I did badly in. Huge waste of time for me and i havent been to France since my last school trip there (back in the olden days). Would have been more useful to study history or IT (it was either history or geography and I don't think my school taught IT).

tooextra - from next year (as I understand it) all children need to be taught a MFL from either Nursery or it might be P1. So the SNP have brought it in!
And it seems not be well funded or thought out as the current general primary class teachers are the ones who are going to teach it.

I'm not surprised you have no idea that the new GCSE almost equivalent is a National 5 -the teachers didn't know the curriculum until 2 yrs before the first children were due to sit them....and don't start me on the massive expense and waste of time that is the Curriculum for Excellence - the child at the centre focussed on child led learning - except when you add all the compulsory elements in there isn't enough time in the High School day in S1-S3 - not much opportunity for the child to have a choice and lead their own learning to investigate and discover areas they are interested in.
At the end of S1 they have to decide whether to drop sciences or arts subjects but it is compulsory they do 'business management' and 'computer studies' (both involved web surfing and watching youtube videos apparently) ...

And really really don't start me on preschool...

I think there is something deeply wrong about language teaching in the UK. Why can a child who has English as a second or even third language pass GCSEs in 8 subjects and get a G for French?

There is obvious ability to learn a language but something happens in school.

I also don't understand why the GCSEs have to be the languages taught in school and that they are limited to mainly French, German and Spanish.

BSL may be more useful (and anecdotally dyslexics seem to find it logical) and if a school only has, say, French teachers but has kids in the school who speak Urdu, Punjabi, Polish or whatever at home why can't they attempt GCSE or even A Level without teaching?

A second language is not much of an asset to getting a lot of jobs, good if you what to be a flight attendant but you don't need it if you are going to be a pilot on the same plane.

I mean the SNP are bringing it in at such a young age - not at National 5 level...I don't mind (except I query the ability to teach them) once reading/basic English is established

sunset
A country can't become good at speaking languages through lessons at school. They became good because the whole culture (home, TV, news, cinema) etc. is drenched in another language.
yyyyy!
When people talk about other countries being fantastic at languages, they mean they're fantastic at teaching English to students who see English as cool and an essential tool.
Australia/ America/ Canada even which is bilingual (English speaking in some parts French in others)-
Not so good at language teaching.
I'm a linguist and very few of my degree peers had just learned languages at school- they had a foreign parent or been expats or spent extended holidays overseas without parents to learn the language.

indeed - 13% of all music sales worldwide are by British artists, so shy shouldn't music be compulsory at GCSE?

English is the by far the most prominent language of music - and film, and most others aspects of the creative industries (which are worth £BiLLIONS)

I find it strange that having been brought up in Wales in a bilingual environment that my primary school kids have no knowledge of other languages. I would be making it compulsory from reception :-D but then, I love languages . ..Bias opinion!