Ch-ch-ch-changes: MFL in the UK School System

As the TES recently reported (Is this MFL’s ‘moment’ or will reforms hasten its decline? 8/11/24), the subject of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) in schools has been in trouble for some time. I have written, and continue to write, in detail about these issues, and this post offers some additional detail to support the issues reported by the TES. 

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The article rightly cites the EBacc as a policy measure which has raised the status of MFL, by including it as one of the suite five subjects that have to be passed in order for a student to count in a school’s EBacc numbers. However, this has not had a sustained effect on take-up. As Figure 1 shows, numbers of students passing all five subjects has never reached 40%, and of those students who pass four, almost all (87.6% in 2021, for example) are missing the MFL component. The emphasis on the EBacc in the reporting of school performance means that some schools create EBacc ‘pathways’ for certain students, which has a negative effect on student motivation and on students with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities, and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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The TES article flags up several reasons for the low take-up of the subject.

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One is a teacher shortage – and we can see that this is an inevitable consequence of the sustained decline in student numbers in schools. When students do not take the subject at GCSE, they can’t take it at A-Level. When they don’t take it at A-Level, they can’t take it to degree level. And without a degree in a language, they can’t train to teach the subject (although bilingual applicants generally don’t need to fulfil this criterion). So lower numbers at GCSE are the start of a downward spiral of numbers at all levels, with a sustained knock-on effect on future GCSE numbers.

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This affects not only overall teacher numbers, but also the languages they can offer – the decline has been driven by French, and German has become vanishingly rare in schools. Figure 2 shows how numbers at GCSE have declined over the past two decades (after the subject was made optional in 2004) and Figure 3 shows the numbers at A-Level (note that the Y axes use different scales).

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Severe grading is another perennial problem for the subject which was highlighted in the TES. This affects students’ perceptions of their own competence in the subject, and is in part driven by a misalignment between the need of schools and the education system to measure and assess, and the nature of language learning and use, which is to communicate – in everyday communication, mistakes are overlooked (we all make mistakes in our own languages all the time), but allowing mistakes is at odds with our understanding of schooling. Harsh grading makes the subject unappealing for students, and indeed for schools, as with the best will in the world, higher grades have higher value than lower ones, even in subjects which are valuable in other ways. 

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The TES article highlights the curriculum & assessment review as a possible ‘moment’ for change in the subject. It is important that as part of this, students’ perceptions of the subject and its usefulness, and themselves as multilinguals, as well as their motivation and goals, are taken into account. One thing my work makes me question is the extent to which the curriculum the school accountability system are designed with students in mind. However, I would suggest that for change to be meaningful and sustainable, it certainly needs to be. 

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