The initiative is being funded with £14.9m from the Department for Education over three years, from 2023 to 2026.
The support offered by the Centre of Excellent will focus on improving standards of teaching in line with the methods outlined in the 2016 Modern Foreign Languages Pedagogy Review led by school leader Ian Bauckham (Teaching Schools Council, 2016).
The DfE’s aim is to build on the previous Modern Foreign Languages Hubs programme, which was made up of nine lead schools. The DfE wants to boost the number of pupils taking languages like French, German and Spanish at GCSE and A level.
The DfE is now accepting bids from schools and organisations interested in running the Centre for Excellence and overseeing the new Language Hubs programme, with the deadline for bids in early December and the contract due to run from March 2023 to March 2026.
Duties under the contract will include establishing the Centre of Excellence, delivering CPD to teachers, and managing a discrete German Promotion Programme.
The contract includes: “Increasing primary and secondary teacher quality and confidence in languages teaching, improving transition from key stage 2 to 3, and increasing opportunities to study languages for those students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
The DfE is eyeing the “strong economic benefits” it says come from learning languages and points to British Council research from 2017 showing that the top five priority languages to improve the UK’s “skills, security and influence” in the world are Spanish, Mandarin, French, Arabic, and German.
The move comes as entries for traditional language GCSEs continue to fall. French remains the most popular language with roughly 129,000 entries in 2022, but this is down from 132,000 in 2021.
After several years of growth Spanish entries dropped from 115,000 in 2021 to 113,000 in 2022. And German attracted 36,000 entries in 2022 but is also in decline, having dropped from 38,000 in 2021.
Other languages garnered around 36,000 GCSE entries in 2022, up from 25,000.
At A level, Spanish is now the most popular course for students in England, attracting 8,496 entries in 2022 (compared with 8,433 in 2021).
French attracted 7,347 in 2022, a slight fall on 7,671 in 2021, while German attracted 2,646 entries (compared with 2,507 in 2021). Other languages attracted 5,171 entries at A level in 2022, up from 4,985.
The DfE’s new scheme includes an attempt to raise the profile of learning German in schools via a German Promotion Project. This will enjoy £400,000 of funding aimed at increasing the number of German teachers in schools and championing German as a subject.
Schools minister Nick Gibb said: “In an increasingly globalised economy, it has never been more important for our pupils to be taught modern foreign languages. There is mounting evidence which shows the economic benefits of learning an additional language.
“This programme will give teachers the rigorous training and knowledge they need to support pupils in learning some of the most prominent global languages such as French, German and Spanish.
- British Council: Languages for the future, 2017: http://bit.ly/3UyPUpX
- DfE: Language Hubs Contract Notice, November 2022: www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/032262-2022
- Teaching Schools Council: Modern foreign languages pedagogy review, November 2016: http://bit.ly/3X8dICQ