The Languages Company

Professor Michael Worton’s review of languages provision in higher education  was published yesterday by HEFCE.

In it Profesor Worton argues that there needs to be continued investment in languages from Government, but that Universities themselves must also take action – taking advantage of their autonomy – to secure the place of languages and the contribution that they make to the strategic objectives of universoities and to society more widely.

Despite some reports to the contrary – including on the BBC – the GCSE results for languages show little real change from last year.

This – together with continued improvements in grades – gives ground for some cautious optimism. The overall figure for languages shows a decline in the number of awards from 377409 to 362338 (just over 15000 – mainly in French).  The figures for England are similar but show a slightly lower percentage decrease (see table).   However this must be put in a context of an overall decline in the size of the cohort taking GCSE this year.