Ministers have awarded an almost £15 million contract to tackle the systemic decline in the number of pupils in England taking foreign languages at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) and A-level (General Certificate of Education Advanced Level). 

    The University College London’s Institute of Education will establish a National Centre for Languages Education (NCLE) made up of up to 25 lead schools specialising in languages to work with up to 105 partner secondary schools. The centre aims to develop strategies to persuade more boys, as well as pupils with special educational needs or disabilities and other disadvantaged pupils, to choose languages, while up to five schools will be chosen to expand the Home Languages Accreditation project, which helps bilingual pupils gain GCSEs or A-levels in their home or heritage language. 

    Nick Gibb, minister for school standards, said: "Our economy needs people who can communicate across the globe and trade with overseas businesses. This programme is about ensuring we have the next generation of young people with the languages needed to compete on the world stage." 

    Crossbench peer Jean Coussins, who co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, said it was good that the government was taking languages seriously, but in order to reach its EBACC (English Baccalaureate) targets, it would "also need to address modern foreign language teacher recruitment (just 34% of target numbers this year)".

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