Start teaching languages at three, says education chief

One of Labour's most senior education figures said yesterday that Britain's approach to teaching languages was "bordering on arrogance" and called on ministers to start teaching children a foreign language from the age of three.

Graham Lane, leader of the 150 local education authorities in England, bluntly warned that the Government's proposals for language teaching were likely to cause Britain to fall "further behind in our linguistic deficit".

Education authorities should put as much effort into language teaching as they did into literacy and numeracy, and begin lessons in nursery and infant classes, he told the annual conference of the Association for Language Learning, which represents language teachers and professors.Every teacher and school staff member should be encouraged to learn a second or third language, and be paid a bonus when they were proficient in it, he added. They could then help children as young as three to start learning a language, thus supporting the Government's proposal to boost language teaching in primary schools by the end of the decade.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland, the minister in charge of the Government's language strategy, said children aged over seven would receive Spanish lessons as part of a drive to improve take-up of the language.

Figures showed the number of people worldwide speaking Spanish as a first language was 322 million, only just behind English with 341 million. Ministers plan to recruit Spanish speakers in Britain to help teach in schools and employ more teaching assistants from Spain.

In his speech, at Bath University, Mr Lane said the existing levels of language learning in schools could not be allowed to continue. "The monolingual approach of the UK is unacceptable in the modern world. The idea that many other people speak English is a naïve approach and bordering on arrogance," he said.

He said British and American troops sent to Iraq should have been taught how to speak Arabic before they arrived in the country. "The spectacle of troops running around saying, 'Does anyone here speak English?' just seems to sum up our attitude to languages," he said. "It would help us win hearts and mind if we spoke their language."

Mr Lane added: "Language teaching in schools should be treated with the same determination as the literacy and numeracy strategies and should begin in pre-school and infant classes. All school staff and not just teaching staff should be encouraged to learn a second or third language and gain a pay rise when they can speak it reasonably well. They can then help to teach it."

Those encouraged to learn a language should include "secretaries, site supervisors, catering staff as well as teachers" and their tuition should be free.

Mr Lane suggested that all pupils should be encouraged to learn a second European language at secondary school, and that, far from scrapping compulsory language teaching at 14, it should remain compulsory to 16 and beyond.

"The diversity of languages is crucial for understanding in a world which is increasingly mobile," he said. "Already three quarters of the people in the world are bilingual."