Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 12 July 2017.
Diolch, Llywydd. When I was in school, the best part of 100 years ago, the policy was that everybody learnt at least one foreign language up to the age of 16. Things are radically different now, and I’m pleased to hear the figures that the Cabinet Secretary announced a moment ago and the emphasis that the Welsh Government is placing upon learning modern foreign languages. But one of the big problems we’ve got in persuading schoolchildren to opt for modern foreign languages is they’re perceived to be difficult, and it is true that learning a language from scratch is difficult and requires discipline for the mind. That’s, of course, one of the great, important reasons for learning a modern foreign language, and it also broadens the mind. And having learned French, German and Russian, as well as Latin, at school myself—it’s made me the cosmopolitan world citizen that I now am. [Interruption.]