Foreign Language Learning in Primary Schools Inquiry
Good morning. I welcome everyone to the sixth meeting in 2013 of the European and External Relations Committee. I make the normal request that mobile phones and electronic devices be switched off, as they interfere with our broadcasting equipment.
Agenda item 1 is further evidence in the committee’s inquiry on languages. This morning we have a panel of experts representing business interests. I welcome Lauren Paterson, senior policy executive at the Confederation of British Industry Scotland; Rebecca Trengove, head of marketing and corporate affairs at Axeon; and Robin Parker, the president of the National Union of Students Scotland. I thank you all for coming. Some of you provided us with written submissions, which are extremely helpful. We will go straight to questions.
What is your interpretation of the one-plus-two pilot project? How will it assist young people in developing skills that they can then use in the business market and in their further education? I am looking for your insight first, and there may be some more detailed questions afterwards.
Lauren Paterson (Confederation of British Industry Scotland)
We are very supportive of the policy. It helps to develop young people’s employability skills, especially going forward into an increasingly globalised economy in which they are competing not only internationally for jobs but within their own country for jobs with international companies.
Our members have said that, in many cases, they are looking not for fluency from young people but more for conversational skills and the ability to understand and interpret different cultures, as that helps them to develop and cement relationships in different countries, which ensures that there are strong relationships when companies are looking to export. We see exporting as extremely important as we try to rebalance the economy, and those skills will be extremely helpful in that.
I echo those comments. We find it invaluable to have language skills, but we do not get them at present from potential job applicants in Scotland. Anything that will redress that balance will be helpful.
The one-plus-two approach, particularly starting in primary schools, is very much to be welcomed because it develops confidence. At the moment, language teaching takes a bit of a scattergun approach—there is not necessarily any consistency in what is done at the primary school level, and there is no consistency in following that through at the secondary level.
In my experience—partly as a parent—by the time that children reach the stage of making choices about which subjects they are going to take, some of them are turned off by languages. Although they have nominally had several years of language training, they are not in a position to be able to use that conversationally, which is critical.
We are not looking for written fluency; we are looking for the ability to pick up a phone and have a polite conversation with somebody. That should start in primary schools, to develop children’s confidence at an early stage so that they are willing to try new things. The policy will be very helpful.
Robin Parker (National Union of Students Scotland)
I am coming at this in terms of the employability of course leavers and graduates. Through a lot of the projects that we have been doing and some of the research that we have done, we have found that language skills are hugely valuable when it comes to employability.
I draw attention to the CBI survey that we reference in our written submission. Employers are saying that, when it comes to recruiting graduates, language skills are crucial and they are not satisfied with things as they stand. I do not have any specific figures for Scotland, but it is estimated that underinvestment in languages costs the United Kingdom about £7.3 billion. We are talking about huge numbers.
As Rebecca Trengove said, learning languages has value in and of itself because it gives graduates or people coming out of their courses a global outlook and the confidence to go anywhere and find employment and to help with the Scottish economy.
The earlier that people are given the opportunity to pick up a language the better. The first extra language that someone picks up is always the hardest; after that, learning a language becomes much easier. The sooner that someone picks up the skill of language acquisition, the easier it is. If people arrive at college or university with those extra language skills, it is much easier for them to get experience of study abroad, and we have found that that is hugely important to employability and to people being able to find a job when they graduate.
That is a nice segue into my next question, which is specifically for the NUS but also has a business aspect. How do we encourage institutions to make more use of Comenius and Erasmus, for example, and how would business use those students? Could the NUS give us some indication of how we could encourage institutions to use Comenius, European Union funding and Erasmus for exactly the situation you have described?
A really good thing about Comenius is that it is available to all students who might be interested in a teaching career. They do not necessarily have to have already decided on a teaching career to go on Comenius.
The uptake of all programmes like Erasmus or other study-abroad programmes is very low in Scotland. We are a long way behind a lot of our European competitors in terms of uptake. Fewer than 1 per cent of students in Scotland have some form of recorded overseas experience as part of their course, and in Spain and Germany, for example, that figure is up to 40 or 60 per cent. We have a long way to go.
With the Scotland goes global programme that we are undertaking at the moment, we are trying to do everything that we can to increase the mobility of students. Essentially it is a Scottish Government-funded project. We are doing awareness-raising projects in universities and colleges but one of the really exciting things that we started recently is going out into schools. We have trained up a series of student ambassadors who have had experience of outward mobility to go into schools and make sure that, before they even come to university or college, pupils are aware of the type of programme that is available to them.
I cannot claim that this is down to our programme but we have been promoting the Comenius programme a lot and the uptake is starting to pick up, albeit starting from a low base. I hope that that will continue in future because it is a good project.
Can our business colleagues give us some insight on how business would use exchange or foreign students, especially in the more globalised market?
We regularly take on student interns to do specific business-focused projects, and we do that by working with the local universities in Dundee and St Andrews. It is quite staggering that almost all the applications for those internships are from foreign students who do not have English as their first language.
Perhaps that is an indicator of the type of students who have chosen to come here. They are the ones who are interested in getting that extra experience. From our point of view, they have the technical skills and the language skills. Those are also factors we consider when employing people on full-time contracts.
The approach of students going into schools provides an excellent opportunity, and it should be rolled into the pilot projects for the one-plus-two model. I know that SCILT—Scotland’s national centre for languages—is also Scotland’s centre for supporting language teaching, and it has a number of pilot projects. Initially, it is looking at businesses working with secondary schools, but the centre is keen to roll out the approach to primary schools so that children from a fairly early stage—around primary 5 or 6—can start to see the business applications for languages as well as the cultural and social advantages. Scotland goes global ambassadors could play an important part in that programme.
Rebecca Trengove’s point about businesses going into schools is an important one. We would encourage our members to do that because it not only opens up the importance of languages to young people and gives them an opportunity to look ahead at what careers they could have with those skills; it gives the businesses the opportunity to develop their staff and give them confidence in working with other young people.
On a personal level, I benefited from a similar project when I was at school. The local authority had a good working relationship with IBM and we did business French classes in which we sat in on calls with IBM staff. That was important in developing a sense of how French could be used after we left school. We realised that it was not just about the sort of vocabulary that we learn in school but about how it is applied in the real world. If that sort of programme could be rolled out across the rest of Scotland—even if it was not in every school but there was an option to access it—that would be a positive move.
Can I make an additional comment? The STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects are very good at involving business in that way. Our company has been involved in a number of STEM projects with a local school in Dundee, which is a great exemplar of what we can do to motivate children and give them a business-type project on which they can work and which gives an indication of how they could use their skills in the working environment. We are talking not necessarily about taking the skills to graduate level but about children developing skills that could be applied in any working context.
On the subject of undergraduates who undertake outward mobility as part of their course, two points sprung up for me from what Rebecca Trengove and Lauren Paterson said.
First, at a national level, we cannot measure whether the students involved are Scottish students or EU students, because they are all measured together. However, we have dug down into the data for a couple of universities and it looks like a lot of the 1 per cent consists of European students who come to Scotland and then go somewhere else because they have already caught the mobility bug. The number of Scottish students undertaking outward mobility could be even lower than 1 per cent.
Secondly, the group who undertake outward mobility is quite narrow in terms of what they study. It is very much language students who do it at the moment. That is despite courses in other parts of Europe being undertaken in English, which means that there are opportunities for STEM students and other kinds of student to undertake much more mobility than they currently do. There is real scope to increase the numbers.
Thank you. Jamie, do you have a supplementary on this subject?
Thank you, convener. I apologise for not being here at the start—that was due to traffic problems.
It has been put to me that some Scottish students are put off studying abroad because it interferes with the curriculum that they study at home in Scotland. Can you comment on that?
Universities could increase the flexibility of their curriculums much more. A lot of them are restrictive in that they allow only large periods of studying abroad, such as a whole year under Erasmus and Comenius programmes, at the start of a degree. Universities could be much more flexible to allow study abroad later in degree programmes. That also points out the need to create more short-term windows for people to study abroad for, say, two or three weeks in an intensive programme. That would help to widen access to studying abroad.
Thank you.
Before we move into open questions, I take the opportunity to welcome to the public gallery the Hon Albert Thindwa MP and the Hon Canaan Kaphamtengo Yona MP from the Malawi Parliament. Very nicely, Albert is my parliamentary pair. I welcome you both to the meeting.
I, too, welcome the Malawi MPs.
Good morning, panel. You have talked about internationalisation, opportunities and so on. How are we coping with the current shortfall in language skills in Scotland?
A lot of our members say that they use individuals in the countries to which they export to make connections and develop language skills. However, they are now also training up their own staff.
One of our international drinks companies recently bought a product over in the Dominican Republic. Although it is using individuals in the Dominican Republic to do a lot of the business, all its executive team are now getting Spanish lessons so that when they go over they can have conversations with people, even just generally. There is a lot of patchworking up of skills by providing intensive training for staff.
09:15
Although we are headquartered in Scotland we have a manufacturing site in Poland, and we have chosen to site our customer services in Poland because we can get the language skills there. Not only do all the team there speak Polish and English, most of them speak German and many of them speak French, Italian or Spanish as well. We can find those multilingual people over there, so that is where the jobs go.
We also recruit international staff. We have staff working here in Scotland who are Chinese, Italian, Spanish and French, because they bring both technical and language skills.
I do not have much to add to that.
Are you saying that because we are poor in language skills we are losing jobs to countries overseas?
Yes, and we are not just losing jobs overseas—people are losing jobs here in Scotland. That trend will continue as time goes on.
Robin Parker has made this point already, but I am struck by the number of foreign students who are studying in Scotland. As I said, they are the ones who apply for internships. When I go to speak at universities on business topics, the audience is predominately international. Our Scottish students are not engaging with the international agenda and they will find themselves disadvantaged at graduation or when they leave school.
That is interesting.
You have given us some examples of good practice and how businesses work with universities, but could colleges and universities do more to engage with business about future planning and language skills needs?
That engagement is always helpful, but it needs to start at schools because by the time children get to university it is too late. By that point, children are either switched on and engaged or—as in most cases—they are not. That is why the one-plus-two agenda and getting children hooked at primary school and in the early years of secondary are so important.
Having said that, I believe that the universities have a role to play. When the other witnesses and I were speaking in the anteroom before the meeting, it was encouraging to hear Lauren Paterson say that the University of Aberdeen is now discovering that a lot of students who study law and accountancy are asking to do languages as supplementary subjects. That is great and exactly what we want to happen, but it needs to start before that.
People in the academic and business sectors do not get together to talk about policy in this area often enough. As part of our Scotland goes global project we are hosting a conference that is designed to bring together people from the academic and business spheres to talk about studying abroad and to talk more widely about how we make Scottish education internationally facing and internationally focused around language.
The Aberdeen example is really important. We are coming from the position that we need to start learning languages much earlier, in primary school, but the approach needs to be right across the piece. We should learn the core subjects that we are all familiar with, but alongside that we should have the ability to learn languages. The Aberdeen example is very good because flexibility is being built into the curriculum, so that students can learn languages alongside their main course of study. That is the way forward.
Willie Coffey will segue into a different subject.
I invite the panel to look forward beyond the one-plus-two approach to later school and early university, and I ask them to think about modern languages in the context of science and engineering.
Rebecca Trengove touched on the STEM subjects earlier. At the moment, is the curriculum flexible enough to allow that kind of transition to take place and are our Scottish youngsters sufficiently aware of the importance of combining languages with subjects such as science and engineering? If not, how can we improve things so that they are?
I take it that you mean the curriculum for excellence. Curriculum for excellence offers great potential for integrating languages with other subjects. I have seen that happening in my children’s school, which embraced it fairly early on.
With regard to interdisciplinary learning, languages and STEM subjects are potentially a very good match. One great example in that respect is a technology-based company in Dundee that has a parent French company and is looking at bringing kids into the workplace to give them an understanding of how they can use languages and then sending them back to school to work on a technological project through the medium of another language.
Although that sort of thing can definitely be done, I think that the difficulty is that in secondary 4, when pupils go down to six subjects, children generally choose those in which they have the most interest, with the children more interested in science dropping languages and vice versa. If a way could be found of continuing languages in some form, that would be ideal.
I simply do not think that children are getting the message that languages are really important, or are getting the message anything like as much as they need to be getting it. STEM subjects get a lot of attention—rightly so, because there is a big gap in the number of people with those skills and it will only get bigger over the next couple of decades—but the jobs that come from them are not just to be found in the UK. As both of my colleagues on the panel have pointed out, all jobs are becoming increasingly international. As companies develop much longer global supply chains, the ability to interact with other countries will be really important. It does not really matter what language children learn at school as long as they get, as others have pointed out, an understanding of how to learn a language.
That is a very long-winded way of saying that I agree that both disciplines are really important. They are not mutually exclusive, and more needs to be done to encourage children to realise that languages will be useful and will be a medium for progressing STEM careers.
I cannot say very much about the secondary school aspect, except to reinforce the point that many who arrive at university or college do not have a very firm grounding in languages. That is why this discussion is so important.
Some universities are building in flexibility of their own volition, and it would be a positive move to encourage other universities to do the same. There is a perception that some of the professional bodies involved in accrediting the curriculum in certain STEM areas can present a barrier. I am not sure how true that is; I know that some are encouraging flexibility in the curriculum and it is the institutions that are not responding. Perhaps you could explore with the professional bodies whether they could do more to encourage institutions or to create flexibility in the accreditation of courses.
Another issue in the university sector that your colleague Clare Adamson will know well from consideration of the Post-16 Education (Scotland) Bill, which is going through Parliament at the moment, is the power it contains to review the landscape of education. The proposal has caused concern in some parts of the higher education sector. Although we in the NUS think that it could be a good and a bad thing, we think that it could be good in language learning if it ensures that enough language provision is available at least somewhere in Scotland. Quite a good example can be found in the problems that arose at the University of Glasgow a couple of years back with regard to the teaching of certain eastern European languages. Anything that promotes collaboration between universities and ensures that someone somewhere in Scotland is teaching both lesser-used and internationally significant languages will be good.
I suppose that the problem with the college sector is funding, with colleges finding it difficult to provide anything perceived to be an added extra beyond the things that are core to their purpose.
Has any snapshot been taken of final-year engineering and science students at any university to find out whether any of them—Scottish students, perhaps—have a language or have taken one as part of their university studies? Is a change beginning to take place or are we still some way from realising the importance of combining science and engineering with a language?
I cannot give you any figures off the top of my head, but I can try to find some for you. I can talk about study abroad, which is not exactly the same thing but is in the same area. The number of STEM students who undertake some sort of study abroad is tiny, particularly in comparison to the situation in other European countries.
Rebecca Trengove said that pupils do not have an understanding of how important language is. The Education and Culture Committee has taken evidence about the skills gap around STEM subjects and, in particular, the underrepresentation of women in those subjects. Do you think that there is a specific problem with languages, or is it that our young people are simply not fully informed about the employment prospects and opportunities in Scotland?
It is probably a bit of both. It is certainly the case that children do not have a good understanding of employment prospects, and that is because teachers do not. Teachers are education professionals and they tend to have only taught, which means that they are less likely to be aware of the changing world of work. That is one area in which better relationships between school and work would probably help.
The issue with languages is probably a cultural thing. We have a dreadful assumption in Britain that everyone speaks English and that we therefore do not need to learn another language. That is not necessarily the school’s fault; it starts at home. People go on holiday and find that they can get by without knowing the language—you can go to Torremolinos and not need to speak any Spanish at all.
That assumption is pervasive and needs to be challenged because it might be the case now that everyone speaks English, but it will not necessarily be the case in 20 years’ time.
There are some great British Council statistics on exactly that point. English is a global language but not to the extent that we imagine it to be. Only 6 per cent of the world’s population speak English as a first language, which is a tiny amount, and 75 per cent of the world do not speak any English at all. If you speak only English, you are speaking to only a quarter of the world’s population.
On the point about informing our young people, I believe that careers advice should start much earlier in school. Although Skills Development Scotland’s my world of work website is a fantastic and hugely important tool for young people, there has to be more one-to-one discussion with young people about what they will do when they leave school. If there were more discussions about why languages are important, the message would get through better.
Rebecca Trengove said that it does not matter what language someone learns. Recently, I visited a good primary school where the pupils were studying French, Gaelic and Scots. One point that was made was that, if they had the funding for the other languages that they had for Gaelic, everything would be wonderful, because there is much more funding for Gaelic than for anything else. From a business point of view, is learning Gaelic as important as learning any other language?
Mr Parker said that only 6 per cent of the world speak English as a first language and that 75 per cent of the world do not speak English at all. Are you talking about the entire population or the population of the business community?
The entire population.
I do not believe that Gaelic is useful for business, outwith a small part of the Gaelic-speaking west coast of Scotland. There are cultural reasons for learning Gaelic, and learning Gaelic will help people to learn other languages, but I do not believe that it is particularly useful from a business point of view. I should stress that that is a personal view.
09:30
You said that it does not matter what language people learn.
It does not, because the process is about learning a system and a different way of thinking, and understanding how languages can work in different ways. I do not speak Gaelic, but the little that I know about it suggests that it is a different type of language from English. If someone has understood the structure of Gaelic, they will understand that the structure of German differs from the structure of English. However, there will be similarities in grammar and grammatical structure and in how the languages work, and those can be applied from one language to another.
I first studied French, then German and then Russian. It became increasingly easier to learn those languages, because I understood how languages work as a structure. To that extent, learning Gaelic would be helpful for learning any other language, or at least any other Indo-European language.
The closer someone is to being brought up fully bilingually—whether in English and Gaelic or English and Polish—the easier it is for them to acquire further languages.
I echo that. It is a transferable skill. Given the spread of languages that business is looking for, it is not feasible for all Scottish schools to provide access to all the languages. Therefore, we need to provide young people with the skills to diverge into those other languages.
Rebecca Trengove talked about SCILT and businesses in schools. The Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Languages, Dr Alasdair Allan, has said that there might be value in considering the use of business champions to support language learning in schools and cultural understanding in the workplace. I ask the panel members to give me their thoughts on the feasibility of business champions.
The idea is certainly feasible, but it depends on the number and type of companies that are willing to commit and the levels to which they can engage. A bigger company is likely to have more resources. The company in Dundee to which I referred is a large company and one of the major employers in Dundee. It has a great deal of interaction with its parent company in France, so it has a clear focus.
It is harder for smaller companies to work with a big group of youngsters in the way that a bigger company can. Nevertheless, companies are willing to engage on the issue. Following a speech that I gave at a language conference in November, I made contact with a number of local companies that were willing to support the agenda to different levels.
It depends on the individual company and its resources, but there is general agreement, certainly among the businesspeople to whom I speak, that we need to support our young people’s learning, whether that is in STEM subjects, languages or how the workplace works, because they are our future employees. We therefore have a duty to help them to understand the skills that they need to acquire so that they can become potential employees for us.
We see a general willingness among all our members to engage, even if that is at the basic level of providing work experience for young people. Smaller employers tend not to have sufficient resources to give a huge amount of time to going into schools. That is because they have smaller numbers of staff and have to focus on running their businesses—it is not because they do not want to engage; it is purely because their time is critical. There is a general willingness among businesses to engage with the agenda.
Lauren Paterson talked about IBM. Do you have other examples of businesses engaging through work experience, apprenticeships or training or in other ways to promote language skills?
I have no more work experience examples, but I have an example of companies getting involved with a school in Renfrewshire whose language department had a careers day that focused purely on careers that can be accessed with language skills. The school contacted us to ask whether some of our members would go along and speak to the pupils. We had a really good response to that. Speaking to young people and informing them about the opportunities that are out there is a small role that businesses can play, but it could be effective. That goes a bit more broadly than the basic careers advice that people normally get.
An example that I have heard about comes from a whisky company somewhere in the central belt or Perthshire that does a lot of business in China. The company hooked up with a local school that was doing a trial of Mandarin teaching and had a group of senior pupils in for a teleconference with people in Beijing. Another example comes from an oil industry company in Aberdeen that did something similar in relation to German, as it had an affiliate in Germany.
There are companies that want to do such work. Part of the blockage preventing them from doing it is the lack of a mechanism by which they can do it. I spoke to the people from SCILT yesterday, who have a couple of pilots that they are keen to roll out. It is a question of resources and of willingness among schools that want to engage and businesses that are willing to host them.
The engagement that happens now depends on the school and the business involved. Rebecca Trengove is right—I do not think that there is a central mechanism for businesses that want to get involved in the school agenda to say that they would be happy to get involved. I do not know how that would be done. It would be a real benefit if there was a way for that engagement to happen, so that it is not a case of a teacher picking up the phone or a connection through a parent or employee.
Our submission refers to a report that we put together called “Developing Scotland’s Graduates for the Global Economy”, which includes case studies, and we have videos of employers talking about the value of college and university graduates who have a global perspective. The same principles apply when we talk about school pupils. The point about placements was well put by colleagues on the panel.
The only thing that I will add is about the peer approach in promoting some of these things. That is one of the reasons why we have been getting current students to talk to school pupils about the value of study abroad. That can be really effective.
Is the discussion a bit concentrated on bigger businesses? The submission from the Federation of Small Businesses was not very positive about the promotion of languages. Do you have any thoughts on that? Is it only big business that is interested in that?
I cannot speak for the FSB or its members, but I think that a lot of them are microbusinesses that might not even have employees, so it would be a big ask for them to take time and resources away from their businesses. It is not just huge multinational businesses; a lot of medium-sized businesses would also be interested in involvement.
On the broader point about the importance of languages for business, although the FSB’s submission suggested that languages were not important for FSB members, as Lauren Paterson said, a lot of those businesses are very small and a lot of them are probably service businesses that do not see the need to export. They might see the need for languages if their business involves people coming into Scotland, as with tourism-related businesses. Having staff with language skills might not be crucial to such businesses, but it might be an extra that they could offer. If a bed-and-breakfast owner can speak to their guests in their native language, those guests might give a bigger tip. It is not a huge amount, but that is the sort of benefit that people can see.
Another point is that businesses change. Business is dynamic, and what might start off as a small business could grow, its needs could change and it could be bought by another business. Employees therefore have different opportunities open to them. For a business to say that it is small so it does not need languages is a slightly narrow way of thinking that does not leave it open to the possibility that things could change.
I have to spring to the defence of Gaelic, and the Celtic languages in general, after some of the earlier comments. Many hundreds of thousands of youngsters speak their Celtic language as their first language and I would hate the committee to have the view expressed that somehow that is of no value and will be of no value in any business life to come. Those many thousands of youngsters grow into adults who use their Celtic language—whether that is Gaelic, Irish or Welsh—in an employment setting. It is important to recognise that.
Of course, we should not confuse the teaching of Gaelic, Irish and Welsh with the modern language agenda. There are clear reasons why Governments in Scotland, Wales and Ireland offer their native language to children. Rebecca Trengove mentioned whisky a moment ago. That is an example where skills in speaking Gaelic would be very helpful.
Many of our world-class whisky brands are uniquely branded using Gaelic names but, to my knowledge, not many people in the business world can even pronounce the names of the whiskies. That is the case in companies from Diageo right down the way. We have to defend our natural, indigenous languages and offer our children as much support as we can to combine them with other modern European languages.
I do not know whether that was a comment or a question, but the witnesses are welcome to respond if they wish.
I had no intention of attacking Gaelic, and I tried to make the point that there are parts of Scotland where it is very useful. I reiterate my point that learning any other language—any language that is additional to a person’s native language—is helpful. If a native Scot or an English speaker learns Gaelic, that will be helpful for learning other languages. If a native Gaelic speaker is learning English for the first time, that will be helpful for them. Robin Parker is absolutely right: being brought up bilingually is a huge advantage in a whole number of ways, and not just in relation to the acquisition of other languages. I take Willie Coffey’s point, however.
That point addressed my earlier question. I have always supported Gaelic as an MSP for the Highlands and Islands. Surely we are here to ask the representatives of the business community what they think about languages—this is not about what we think about them.
To go back to another point that I made earlier, it was expressed to me at a Gaelic-medium school that I recently visited that, if other languages had the same amount of money put into them as Gaelic has had, it would be a better thing altogether, because they could all be taught better.
Both those points are well made.
I think that members have exhausted their questions but, if witnesses wish to add anything, I am happy to hear it.
Mr McGrigor asked an important question about costs. Like many of the previous witnesses, I do not have anything to say about what the right amount is or about whether the amount that is on the table is enough. From the NUS point of view, the one-plus-two approach is extremely important, and if more primary school pupils get the opportunity to learn an additional language, that will be extremely important for Scotland’s future. If we are going to do that, let us do it properly.
I want to get a point in about the approach that we take to language teaching. Language is often taught from quite a mechanistic point of view in schools, in a “This is how it works” kind of way, rather than adopting an enjoyable, fun, applicable and applied approach to learning, which is the approach that I would encourage.
In our investigations in schools, we have picked up on the difference between how languages are taught at secondary school level and what we have seen in the pilot schools, where we have been in classes where children have started and finished and gone right through the class in the one language. That includes primary 1s, who have had counting, the alphabet, games and songs—the whole gamut. They have enjoyment and motivation, and the most important thing is the confidence that that approach gives those young children. We saw five-year-olds who are much more bilingual than I could ever dream of being, and the confidence absolutely oozes from them. That is the key point. If they feel happy and confident, and quite smart about what they can do, the difference is amazing.
You are right: I know as the parent of a 14-year-old that getting pupils of that age to sit down and do Spanish, say, is difficult. They have their book open and they might find it a bit boring. If they get taken to a Spanish-speaking country and are encouraged to use some of their language, that can be much better. Mr Parker is absolutely right about how to give enjoyment to the process of study and how to build confidence. We have seen a marked difference there. The point is well made.
I completely agree. That will be critical to changing how language is taught in Scotland. A fair degree of revised teacher training will be required, and I urge the committee to ensure that the funding that is in place—and I cannot say what it should be—is sufficient for good-quality teacher training, not just for the pilot but for what is rolled out.
A director of education has commented that, in other areas of the curriculum where there have been changes, they have been an aspiration rather than a commitment. That leaves a lot of wriggle room. The curriculum is crowded, and there are a lot of demands on teachers. I urge the committee to try to make the commitment as definite as possible—to give the education sector a long-term commitment on something that the Government wants to do and expects to happen over a long period. It is commitment over a long time that will give teachers the confidence to roll out the pilot.
09:45
That commitment is one of the Government’s clear objectives. You are absolutely right that it is a matter of rolling out the pilot.
On the approach to training—I made similar comments about the STEM issue—there is perhaps more opportunity either though the General Teaching Council for Scotland or the institutions for BEd students who are studying at universities to have the flexibility to learn a second language alongside their main course of education study, and that would be provided by the universities. That would allow students who have not had the opportunity to study a second language at secondary or primary school to get a qualification. That might help in relation to some of the committee’s previous discussions about whether that should be a requirement for entry to teaching study.
That is one of the questions on our list to ask the minister, who will be our next visitor to the committee on the subject, in a few weeks’ time.
Thank you very much for your evidence, which has been valuable and insightful—bringing together our point of view, the educational point of view and the business point of view. I was not sure whether that would work, but I think that it has, and you have complemented one another very well. If you have any other statistics or information or anything that you think will inform our future work on the topic, we would be delighted to hear from you, and the clerk will provide a conduit for any further exchange of information.
09:46
Meeting suspended.
09:56
On resuming—
Welcome back to the European and External Relations Committee. We move on to agenda item 2.
As part of the committee’s continuing inquiry into the teaching of foreign languages in primary school, Clare Adamson, Willie Coffey, Jamie McGrigor and I have recently visited various primary schools throughout the country—of course, the launch of phase 1 of the inquiry was held at a school in Glasgow with Hanzala Malik. We will give some feedback to the committee on the outcomes of those visits, kicking off with Willie Coffey.
I record my thanks to Eileen Martin, who accompanied me to the meeting with two schools in East Ayrshire, and Alasdair MacCaluim, one of the Parliament’s Gaelic officers. Eileen helpfully took some notes of the meeting, which was fantastic to see.
I visited Darvel primary school and Kilmaurs primary school in East Ayrshire, both of which I know well. Both of them teach French.
In Darvel, we visited the primary 7 children, who get about an hour of French every week. Some of the pupils said to us that, before primary 6, they still have difficulty learning English, so a great debate took place between the children in the pupil forum that we held about whether it was appropriate to have one language plus two or more when the children were still getting to grips with the English language. That was a fantastic debate. Opinions were split evenly.
When asked about choices, some of the children felt that the emerging economy languages—for example, Chinese or Russian—were important to focus on. They thought that they would be particularly useful, as did the parent who attended. She felt that, if there was a choice to be made, it would be useful if there was slightly better focus on some of the emerging economy languages.
The teacher at Darvel has a degree in modern languages. She is very dedicated and professional. However, she said that she would prefer one extra language to start with to maintain the quality of language teaching. She felt that introducing two might dilute effort with the additional resources that would be required to support that.
Looking beyond that to secondary school, she then highlighted the need for additional resources if we were to maintain the strategy through and beyond secondary school. I think that that message has been shared with committee members who made other visits.
The children at Kilmaurs primary school are also doing French. We had a wonderful opportunity to see what was going on in the French lessons for the primary 3 and primary 4 class. We saw them at two sessions: doing some work in the classroom and some work in the gymnasium. Kilmaurs is trying to offer the children experience of the French language in different settings within the school, which is really helpful.
The children there were interested in languages from Sri Lanka and wanted to learn Japanese. Some of them wanted to learn American. It was really wonderful to hear that.
10:00
The children in both schools thought that their learning was enhanced by watching cartoons, sport and other things with subtitles on TV. The teacher at Kilmaurs primary school, who has a higher in Russian, stressed the importance of the transition from primary to secondary and said that it is really important to get that right. She also said that the glow facility that is available from Education Scotland can provide exciting interchanges between schools in a safe online environment. That is not really available to Scottish children through normal sources of media such as TV. Glow could be developed much more to support that.
The teacher said that having a language and teaching it are two different things, and she emphasised the importance of training if we are to take this work forward. A common message that we heard in both schools is that the curriculum is pretty full. What do we take out to make way for additional second language teaching? There needs to be some thinking on how we construct and build the curriculum. Foreign language assistants were mentioned, too, and there was a plea from both schools that we do something in that regard to try to assist the process and take the project forward.
The visits were very positive. I was hugely impressed by the work that is going on and incredibly impressed by the skills and abilities of the young students at Darvel and Kilmaurs primary schools. They are a credit to not only their schools but their families.
Thank you for those detailed and insightful comments on your visit. You obviously enjoyed yourself.
I invite Jamie McGrigor to give us an overview of his visit to Lochyside Roman Catholic primary school in Fort William. You made it to Fort William and back again, Jamie. Well done.
Yes. It was quite snowy going through Glencoe, but it was fine. One of the teachers kindly took some notes for me, and I am very grateful to her. Literally the following morning, I got a little letter saying:
“Dear Jamie,
It was such a pleasure to welcome you to the school this morning. Thank you, on behalf of all the staff and pupils.
We appreciate your interest and support for our Book Project.
I’ve attached notes of our discussion”.
That was very nice.
I gave the school the committee’s set of questions, and I will tell you what the answers were. The first question was:
“Is there enough money?”
The school responded:
“insufficient information to answer the question.”
The next question was:
“Do existing teachers have the skills?”
The school responded:
“We should carry out a national audit to ascertain current position of skills in Modern Languages.”
On teaching resources, the school stated:
“Gaelic resources are excellent. Audio, visual and display materials are provided as part of the training and are very relevant to CfE methods.
MLPS French: none of the above. Schools are obliged to buy or make their own resources for use with pupils. Good ideas are now coming from websites (such as Passeporte Francophone) which are suitable for CfE.
There is no formal training in Scots at present. A good range of materials is available commercially for schools to buy and staff make their own resources.”
The next question was:
“Should there be more training and support?”
The school responded:
“These should be on-going for existing teachers, to maintain fluency, confidence and relevance. Training and support would be good for morale. At present some language teachers can feel isolated or that their language is undervalued by colleagues (NOT in this school!!)
Regular contact with colleagues at ASG level would also help e.g. through an agreed programme of work, ensuring coverage, progression and continuity, particularly at transition stage.”
The next question was:
“What is the capacity within the curriculum to accommodate greater language study? Can it be embedded in existing teaching?”
The school responded:
“The best way to accommodate extra language study is through CfE, where language work can easily be integrated with cross curricular activities. The Wee Big Books Project was designed with this in mind.”
That project is a brilliant thing. It was designed by the art department in the school, which is a wonderful thing, called the Room 13 studio. It is completely independent and it pays for all its own materials. I was incredibly impressed by that. The pupils designed a book in French—the one that I looked at was about the life of the banana. It was not so much a cartoon book as a beautiful audiovisual sort of book, and it was produced by the children, so I took note of that.
The rest of the response stated:
“Organisation within schools would need to be arranged according to individual circumstances i.e. number of trained staff, composite classes, school role etc. Such a cross curricular approach also requires careful monitoring of progression and coverage.”
The next question was:
“Which languages should children be learning and why?”
The response stated:
“I suggest they should be learning Scots and Gaelic because they are our native languages. Traditionally, French (and German) have been taught, so more staff are readily available to deliver lessons in those languages than in Norwegian or Spanish, for example.”
The next question was:
“What is the role of languages in economic development?”
The response stated:
“It facilitates other learning. Learning additional languages encourages a broad-minded approach to other cultures. It widens the scope for employment and business, both personally and as a nation.”
The next question was:
“What should children be learning to help them get jobs, help Scotland flourish economically?”
The response stated:
“From an economic point of view, at present, perhaps Mandarin might be a good language for children to learn.”
The children certainly had no problem with English either—they were very voluble. They were extremely confident and were obviously enjoying the languages.
I took part in a French lesson, and since I can speak a little French I was invited to teach for a little bit—poor children!—which I thoroughly enjoyed. The lesson was a good example of the very good progress in what the one-plus-two model is seeking to achieve. The remark about there being so many more resources for Gaelic was telling, and there was a feeling that, if the other languages were resourced in that way, much more progress could be made.
That is all that I have to say about the school—I am very glad that I went, and it was a useful experience for me.
Thank you for a very detailed report, with a lot of questions and answers and information.
I will give the piece of paper to the clerks, so that they have all the information.
That would be very helpful, thank you. I invite Clare Adamson to give the committee an overview of our visit to Machanhill primary school in Larkhall, which is in my constituency.
It was a very snowy morning when we arrived at Machanhill primary and the school was under quite a bit of pressure due to staff not being able to make it in, but nonetheless we had two wonderful sessions with representatives of the school council from primary 1 right up to primary 7. There were quite a few members in the round-circle discussion in which I and the convener took part, and we were given the opportunity to go to different classes and see the language teaching in operation.
As we found on our previous school visit to St Elizabeth’s primary in South Lanarkshire, the teaching method in the classroom involved complete immersion. The pupils were playing a game and taking part in everyday activities, such as ordering lunch, entirely in French.
In the circle discussion, we found that all the children were really enthusiastic about what they were doing. That enthusiasm spread among younger and older siblings in families: the children spoke about how learning a language had influenced their family and home life, as siblings were at different levels so the older ones were helping their younger siblings with the language.
It struck me, although I have no doubt about the competence of the teachers delivering this part of the curriculum, that every pupil in the school that we visited knew which teacher had studied French and they enjoyed her classes because they recognised the difference between someone who had been trained to deliver language teaching and someone who was completely fluent in a language. That reinforces some of the evidence that we have heard about the importance of native language speakers being involved in schools. The school had been involved in the Comenius projects, so it was well aware of some of those aspects.
I also noted that the school had previously run trips to Paris with a senior group. However, as with many things, because of the current economic climate the school had pulled back and did not intend to run any more international trips. That would obviously impact on the ability of the children to gain more exposure to the language.
The only thing that I would add to that is that the primary school is the next one in South Lanarkshire in line for a rebuild and is waiting to move into temporary accommodation. With the new technology that will be installed in the new building, the school is keen to re-engage with the connecting classrooms project. At the session that I attended, I saw a very competent teacher and a very motivated group of young people who were pushing each other out of the way to answer questions in French—in a nice way. That shows the motivation and dedication that exist, and the kids were having fun. A key element of teaching younger children a foreign language is making it fun, as that makes it easy to learn. That is the lesson that I learned that day.
I would like to add one thing that I forgot to mention about the wee big book project, which is very important and was very much part of the teaching at Lochyside. The aim of the project is to produce a series of A3-size books on topics across the curriculum. Teacher guides will be provided and include suggestions for language work as well as further cross-curricular activities on the themes of the books. Scots is taught in all classes. French and Gaelic are taught in P5 to P7 at present but, by August 2013, that teaching will extend across all stages. The simple text of the books will be in Scots, French and Gaelic, and the text will be written by Mrs Murphy, the French teacher. Translations will be provided by specialists, with input from pupils at Lochaber high school. I will give you the titles of the books that they have made to date.
Thank you. That is helpful.