Question reference: S5W-23262
- Asked by: Tavish Scott, MSP for Shetland Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Date lodged: 17 May 2019
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Current status: Answered by John Swinney on 30 May 2019
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what measures it is taking to increase the (a) number of modern language teachers in (i) primary and (ii) secondary schools and (b) uptake of modern languages at senior level.
Answer
Since 2013, we have supported key aspects of language learning by providing an additional £30.2million to local authorities and £9.67million to Scotland’s National Centre for Languages (SCILT) and the Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools for the implementation of our 1+2 language policy.
Local authorities are using our funding to support language learning in a range of ways to meet their local circumstances, including teacher participation in immersion courses, teacher professional learning and classroom resources. Education Scotland has recently published new educational resources for teachers and more are planned. SCILT is providing professional learning programmes in language teaching and learning. SCILT is also helping schools make links to communities and businesses to improve language learning and understanding and helping schools promote language learning to young people and parents.
Annual targets are set for intakes into modern languages secondary teacher education courses to help address any recruitment difficulties in these subjects.
Our evidence shows that the majority of both secondary and primary schools are now meeting the full entitlement to learning a first additional language from P1 onwards and, across all age groups, more young people than ever before are learning languages.