Getting the Buggers into Languages
D. A. Hill · ELT Journal · 2007
If you follow what goes on in UK education through the British press, as I do from Hungary, you will be aware that the papers periodically have headlines lamenting the fact that few British children know much about history, or that science teaching isn't what it was, or that many pupils cannot point to Bristol, Budapest, or Buenos Aires on a map any more. The end of 2006 saw more than a few articles about the state of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL). Estelle Morris, a previous Education Secretary, allowed secondary schools to make languages optional for pupils over 14. This has meant that there has been large-scale dropping of the subject, so that from 80 per cent only 51 per cent of pupils now take a GCSE in MFLs. (The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is the name of a set of British examinations, usually taken by secondary school...