‘It’s a vicious circle’: The British Academy responds to news that 60% of English schools find it difficult to hire qualified language teachers - Language Trends Survey 2024

The British Academy has responded to the British Council’s annual Language Trends report, which reveals that 60% of schools in England have faced challenges hiring qualified language teachers.

Commenting on the findings, Professor Charles Forsdick FBA, Lead Fellow for Languages at the British Academy, said: “There has been a worrying spate of UK university language course closures and contractions this year. But the British Council’s latest survey shows that the problem in fact starts much earlier in the system. Language provision across our entire education system needs radical renewal – especially to address inequalities in access to language learning between state and independent schools.

“It’s a vicious circle: schools struggle to recruit and retain language teachers and assistants, meaning language provision is becoming increasingly limited in schools. This reduces the number of students studying languages at GCSE and A-level, which, despite the good efforts of university departments to innovate in their provision, leads to declining registrations for languages degrees – and fewer people able to use languages in their careers or train as languages teachers.

“Languages education needs a joined-up approach that thinks about schools, colleges, universities and teacher-training holistically, and draws more actively from the extensive multilingual capacity already present in our communities. The new government should prioritise language teacher recruitment and retention to meet teachers’ and pupils’ needs and make teaching languages a rewarding and worthwhile vocation for graduates.”

This year, the British Council surveyed teachers at more than 1,300 primary, secondary and independent schools across England and found that:

• 60% of schools have faced challenges when hiring qualified language teachers, with 33% of state schools reporting it to be a “major issue”. One state secondary teacher said they had not been able to find any experienced language teachers for several years and this year recruited the only candidate to be interviewed.
• Access to international opportunities and language assistants is significantly higher in independent schools than state schools: Pupils at independent schools received far greater access to international engagement opportunities and language assistants, with nearly three times as many independent schools saying they host language assistants.
• Latin is growing in primary schools, but language provision has suffered overall: A quarter of responding schools said allocated language lessons have been impacted by pupils spending extra time on literacy and numeracy, and some teachers commented languages would fall off the timetable altogether due to staffing issues. Nearly 80% of state schools said they relied on commercially produced resources to teach languages.
• Home, heritage and community language-learning is more accessible in state schools: Pupils who speak languages other than English at home have more provisions to access qualifications in those languages at state schools. Seventy-nine per cent of state schools said they paid examination fees for home and heritage languages compared to just 17% of independent schools.

Together with the British Council and three other organisations, the British Academy launched the Languages Gateway in 2023, an online resource designed to broaden access to language learning for people of all ages in the UK. Polling commissioned by the British Academy last year revealed that there is keen public interest in and support for language learning – most UK adults agree that studying a modern language should be compulsory in primary school (64%) and in secondary school (71%).