Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:22 pm on 3 February 2021.
Can I thank Suzy Davies for giving me a minute in this debate and also for the enthralling way that she's led this debate, which I certainly enjoyed, and I'm sure other people did? In 2019, the BBC reported that foreign languages were being squeezed out of schools' timetables by core subjects like the Welsh baccalaureate. There's been a 29 per cent fall in language GCSE entries in Wales in five years—a steeper fall than in the rest of the United Kingdom. A GCSE pupil in a school in Wales will have a minimum of six and a maximum of eight mandatory subjects that they must take, with between two and four optional. For those options, as well as languages, they've got history, geography, ICT, drama, physical education, RE, and, as I've only got a minute, I can't read out the rest of them. But there's a whole range of options they've got, and they've got a maximum of four and a minimum of two. Is it any surprise that modern foreign languages are reducing? You're competing against some of the more popular subjects that are not themselves mandatory. Is there a solution to this? The solution is straightforward—I don't expect it to be done, but it's straightforward—if somebody wants to do two modern foreign languages, they only have to do the single science option, rather than a double science option. That would mean that pupils who don't like science—and I know what it's like, because I had a daughter who didn't like science at all, but who liked languages—give them the opportunity to do two languages. It's not going to happen otherwise. You've got two to four options—are you going to choose two languages out of those? Almost certainly not. If we want foreign languages to be used, it's really important that we don't make people do double science as well.