Petition
Foreign Languages Policy (PE1022)
Agenda item 4 is further consideration of PE1022 on foreign language learning. The committee has received a response from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning to its most recent correspondence, and the recommendation is that, given our extensive engagement, we close the petition. The committee can of course retain an interest in the subject of the petition and continue to monitor the issues that it raised.
I am pleased that we are considering the petition again. I note the recommendation to close it without doing anything specific thereafter, but I am reluctant to let it go. The petitioner called for an "urgent … step change" in attitudes to foreign language learning. It is clear that, despite our attempts on several occasions to engage the cabinet secretary, including on the responses that we received from the Scottish funding council and other issues, the Government is showing neither urgency nor a step change in attitude. We have received sympathetic responses from the Government, but nothing that told us that it has grasped the concept that Scotland needs to break its monolingual traditions and become more internationalist in its approach and outlook.
We have given PE1022 a good go. I am aware that the committee does not usually pursue single-issue subjects. We have had petitions on Scottish history and so forth, but it is not in our remit to become a vehicle for such individual issues. Clearly, the cabinet secretary is not interested in making an urgent step change in policy. I sympathise with the petitioner, Dr Murray Hill, but I recognise the need to close the petition. We are getting nowhere, and there is no point in continuing the petition when we are making no progress.
Perhaps we could agree to put something slightly more formal on the agenda of a future meeting than simply to write on an occasional basis to the cabinet secretary and include questions on the subject in routine evidence-taking sessions—doing only that sounds rather dismissive. Perhaps we could agree to something slightly more formal by making a commitment to write to the cabinet secretary on a six monthly or annual basis over the duration of this session of the Parliament—after all, we have only two years left—in which we ask for an update on progress.
The Scottish funding council has said that it will continue to monitor the demand for and supply of languages, so we should at least provide a public airing for the Government's monitoring of the SFC's work on that. I think that something that is slightly more formal would be in order, if that is okay.
In his last letter to the committee, the petitioner talked about the routes into languages programme that is being rolled out in England. I am not sure about the timescale for the papers that accompany the clerk's note. Have we alerted the cabinet secretary to the scheme in England and drawn to her attention the petitioner's suggestion of a similar scheme for Scotland?
I do not think that the scheme has been flagged up to the cabinet secretary.
Elizabeth Smith could not attend today's meeting, but she told me that she wonders whether the committee could take evidence from the cabinet secretary on a wider issue that would provide scope to pursue some of the points about foreign language teaching. It would help the committee to hear from the cabinet secretary about the new qualifications framework and the baccalaureate for foreign languages, to which she has made a commitment. If we heard from her in the autumn, that would give us an opportunity to put some of the issues to bed formally. I say to Mr Macintosh that that might be slightly better than just writing to the cabinet secretary every three or six months until the end of the parliamentary session. We might also obtain something constructive from such evidence.
Is the committee content to ask the cabinet secretary to appear before the committee, at a time in the autumn that suits her, to talk about the qualifications framework, to follow up points that were raised when she made her announcement in the chamber and to talk about the baccalaureate and foreign language teaching?
That sounds slightly more formal. As I said, I was slightly worried that we were just letting the petition go and drift away quietly; what has been suggested is at least a positive way to conclude consideration of the petition.
Rather than just focus on the baccalaureate and the examination system, can we mention the institution-wide learning programme? The petitioner's point is not just about school learning or even advanced or higher study. I do not know whether, like me, other members have received a lot of correspondence about changes in modern language provision at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde that have caused much worry. Each institution has defended its course of action, but serious cuts are being made.
The petitioner's point is about not just formal courses of learning but access to language provision for everybody. It is about ensuring that all students at higher institutions have access to a foreign language. When we meet students at any university in the rest of Europe or from any other country in Europe, the fact that virtually all can speak two languages is marked. Our country falls down in that regard. That reflects many things, but we need not accept that situation. That is not about encouraging more students to do a degree in French, German or any other modern language but about allowing all our students access to language provision.
If we invite the cabinet secretary to give evidence, perhaps we could mention that aspect of language provision in our letter, so that she comments on that rather than just on the numbers who are taking up the baccalaureate or who are studying through the Erasmus and Socrates programmes or whatever else. I would be content if we pursued the matter in that way.
If the cabinet secretary agrees to give evidence, I am sure that members will have the opportunity to question her extensively on the issue. Do we agree to write to the cabinet secretary?
Members indicated agreement.
That is great. That concludes our consideration of PE1022. We will write to advise the petitioner that the petition is now closed and of the final action that the committee will take on it.
This is our last meeting before the summer recess. I hope that we will all have a good summer. I thank everyone who has attended committee meetings in the past few months.
Meeting continued in private until 11:43.