A Future for Languages in Schools? LCLC Colloquium
PAST EVENT | 03 July 2015 10:00
Languages in the UK are at a watershed. There is growing recognition of their immense value, not only for the economic benefits they bring to individuals and to society – employers consistently rate language competency amongst the most desirable skills they seek in graduates – but also for the cultural and civic values that they foster. Understanding foreign languages is an integral part of world citizenship, whilst the capacity for personal enrichment and global progress enabled by cultural and linguistic comprehension is enormous.
Yet a 2012 Eurobarometer report found the UK languishing in 24th place out of 27 European Union member states in terms of the ability to converse in at least one foreign language, whilst the British Council’s most recent Language Trends Survey found that in 2013, for the seventh consecutive year, less than half of state school pupils in England took a language GCSE. Numbers taking the subject to A Level are falling even more precipitously. In British universities, this is a major contributing factor to the shrinking and closure of language departments, and the narrowing of languages available to be studied to degree level.
What is to be done?
For the last two years, Pembroke College Oxford, The Open University, and other partner institutions have pioneered a new approach to collaboration between schools and universities, through the London Centre for Languages and Cultures. Working intensively with pupils and teachers in London, the LCLC aims to enhance subject knowledge, and encourage the study of languages, particularly amongst students from the state sector. The LCLC is supported by the London Schools Excellence Fund, an initiative through which several other projects supporting and promoting languages have been running in the capital.
The aims of this one-day colloquium are twofold: to bring together representatives from these language projects to share their findings with others who are concerned about the state of languages in the UK; and to gather senior figures from universities, from schools, from government, and from third-sector organisations, to make plausible and actionable suggestions for the improvement of languages in schools, and of the relationships between schools, universities, and policy-makers.
If you would like to attend, please contact the LCLC Co-ordinator, Matt Garraghan, on mgarraghan@wmsf.ac.uk
A Future for Languages in Schools? LCLC Colloquium
PAST EVENT | 03 July 2015 10:00
Languages in the UK are at a watershed. There is growing recognition of their immense value, not only for the economic benefits they bring to individuals and to society – employers consistently rate language competency amongst the most desirable skills they seek in graduates – but also for the cultural and civic values that they foster. Understanding foreign languages is an integral part of world citizenship, whilst the capacity for personal enrichment and global progress enabled by cultural and linguistic comprehension is enormous.
Yet a 2012 Eurobarometer report found the UK languishing in 24th place out of 27 European Union member states in terms of the ability to converse in at least one foreign language, whilst the British Council’s most recent Language Trends Survey found that in 2013, for the seventh consecutive year, less than half of state school pupils in England took a language GCSE. Numbers taking the subject to A Level are falling even more precipitously. In British universities, this is a major contributing factor to the shrinking and closure of language departments, and the narrowing of languages available to be studied to degree level.
What is to be done?
For the last two years, Pembroke College Oxford, The Open University, and other partner institutions have pioneered a new approach to collaboration between schools and universities, through the London Centre for Languages and Cultures. Working intensively with pupils and teachers in London, the LCLC aims to enhance subject knowledge, and encourage the study of languages, particularly amongst students from the state sector. The LCLC is supported by the London Schools Excellence Fund, an initiative through which several other projects supporting and promoting languages have been running in the capital.
The aims of this one-day colloquium are twofold: to bring together representatives from these language projects to share their findings with others who are concerned about the state of languages in the UK; and to gather senior figures from universities, from schools, from government, and from third-sector organisations, to make plausible and actionable suggestions for the improvement of languages in schools, and of the relationships between schools, universities, and policy-makers.
If you would like to attend, please contact the LCLC Co-ordinator, Matt Garraghan, on mgarraghan@wmsf.ac.uk