Can you translate GCSE?

Nearly 40 per cent of schools in UK have declared that the number of students taking foreign language GCSEs had increased this year as a direct result of a reform in the world of teaching and learning.

The English Baccalaureate, which was introduced in 2010 as a student performance measure, is a school leaving certificate that rewards students gaining good GCSEs in core academic subjects such as English, maths and foreign languages.

Just two years after its introduction, the reform has started to reverse almost a decade of declining interest in foreign languages, which followed a decision by Labour to make languages an optional subject in 2004.

According to experts it would be a requirement to have at least a GCSE in a foreign language to get into university as the move could prevent UK from suffering serious commercial and cultural damages on the long term.

Kathryn Board, head of languages at CfBT, has recently highlighted how much the introduction of the English Baccalaureate has improved the figures for the take-up of languages in many secondary schools in UK.

However, there is still a significant gap in standards between state and private schools. In the first group only 23 per cent of heads made German, French, Spanish or other foreign languages a compulsory subject at GCSE level, compared with more than 80 per cent in independent schools.