{"id":2506,"date":"2023-06-30T18:58:59","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T18:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/?p=2506"},"modified":"2025-11-10T08:59:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T08:59:57","slug":"two-in-three-state-secondary-schools-in-england-teach-just-one-foreign-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/2023\/06\/30\/two-in-three-state-secondary-schools-in-england-teach-just-one-foreign-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Two in three state secondary schools in England teach just one foreign language"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2023\/jun\/29\/two-in-three-state-secondary-schools-in-england-teach-just-one-foreign-language\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2023\/jun\/29\/two-in-three-state-secondary-schools-in-england-teach-just-one-foreign-language<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Guardian reports that two-thirds of state secondary schools in England now offer only <em>one<\/em> foreign language to all pupils at Key Stage 3 (11\u201314). German is the biggest casualty of this contraction: it is taught in barely a third of state schools. Meanwhile independent schools still maintain a wider linguistic repertoire. Teacher shortages, underfunding, and a long feedback-loop of low take-up \u2192 less provision \u2192 even lower take-up seem to be driving the squeeze. The UK government has launched new \u201cLanguage Hubs\u201d to try to reverse the trend, but the scale looks small compared to the structural slide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Seen in a post-Brexit frame, the picture is even more ironic. Brexit was rhetorically framed as a way to \u201cgo global\u201d; logically, that should have made <em>more<\/em> multilingual competence essential. But the schooling data suggest the opposite dynamic: a shrinking linguistic horizon, a kind of quiet monolingualisation inside the very society that now needs multiple linguistic bridges to navigate non-automatic international mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the EU, English still functions as lingua franca; but in England, plurilingual capacity is weakening. That divergence is one of the most curious symptoms of the post-Brexit era: Europe remains structurally multilingual, but England is increasingly socially structured for \u201cone foreign language is enough\u201d. For language education, policy, translation\/localisation professions and future intercultural labour markets, this is not a trivial development. It is a structural one \u2014 and it will shape who can <em>actually<\/em> participate globally, beyond slogans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do you think is driving this? Is this a temporary post-Covid teacher-shortage artefact \u2014 or a deeper shift in how England imagines languages? And is Brexit pushing the UK <em>towards<\/em> the world economically \u2014 or <em>away<\/em> from its languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/education\/2023\/jun\/29\/two-in-three-state-secondary-schools-in-england-teach-just-one-foreign-language) The Guardian reports that two-thirds of state secondary schools in England now offer only one foreign language to all pupils at Key Stage 3 (11\u201314). German is the biggest casualty of this contraction: it is taught in barely a third of state schools. Meanwhile independent schools still maintain a wider linguistic repertoire. Teacher shortages, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":2507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-es"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2508,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2506\/revisions\/2508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uclm.es\/uniling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}