Labour backs English baccalaureate to boost languages study

The government's English baccalaureate (Ebacc), which recognises pupils who achieve good passes in a mix of academic subjects at GCSE, has won support from Labour's education spokesman.

Stephen Twigg, who was appointed shadow education secretary last month, gave qualified praise to the measure, which he said might reverse the decline in children studying languages.

The Guardian

King's College London to establish dedicated Russia Institute in 2013

A new institute for the study of contemporary Russia is to be established at a London university, the latest in a network of institutes at King's College London devoted to mapping the rise of emerging powers.
The university's Russia Institute, due to open in 2013, joins an India Institute which opened in September and institutes focusing on Brazil and China that were set up in 2008.

The Guardian

Skills warning over foreign language assistant cuts

The number of foreign language assistants in Scottish schools has fallen by 80% in the past six years.

Figures from British Council Scotland revealed the total had dropped to 59, down from 284 in 2005/06.

Only seven out of 32 local authorities employed native speakers of French, German, Italian, Spanish or Chinese

BBC website

Discard the irrelevant: Statistics don’t bleed, but our students do.

John Canning, LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Some rise by sin and others by virtue fall. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Statistics are everywhere in education. We have the National Student Survey (NSS), the First Destinations Survey, newspaper league tables, and the Times World University rankings among others. Universities are now required to publish ‘Key Information Sets’ (KIS) from 2012. The KIS has data from the NSS (the higher the agreeing percentages the better), the cost of university accommodation (presumably the lower the better), fees (the lower the better), graduate employment rates (the higher the better), percentage of assessment which is written exams (depends on the student) and number of ‘contact’ hours (again, depends on the student). In short if it can be measured the data is out there. And if it can’t be measured, we’ll find a way to measure it anyway, (research impact anyone?). Add to all this the information that students get from visit days, Facebook, twitter, the online student forums, friends and the phrase ‘information overload’ comes to mind. In his report Dimensions of Quality Graham Gibbs warns us about that immeasurable factor, reputation, which can override any real measure of quality. I suspect that all this information only serves to make reputation all the more important.

As I warned in a recent article on the NSS chasing the ratings can be tempting. Bad practices can beget good statistics which are really evidence of a bad situation. Sometime in the early 1990s I watched a football game between Cheltenham Town and Worcester City in the Beazer Homes League. Disappointingly, for those who feel distressed at having missed this mouth-watering encounter, I’m not aware of it being available on DVD, but the Worcester goalkeeper had an amazing game making save after save. But why was he so good that night? He had to be - the rest of his team were dreadful. The Cheltenham Town attack kept him busy all evening. And despite the goalkeeper’s super performance his team still conceded five goals (fans of the statistically excited sport of American football may find the illustrations on the Freakonomics blog even more exciting than my example). A course with a high number of contact hours could be one where students are spoon-fed in endless lectures or who have timetabled ‘group work’ sessions which exist for the sole purpose of increasing contact hours. Low rents may make university cheaper, but they can be a reflection of poor economic conditions or poor quality accommodation.

If we are near the top of the employability league we proclaim it online, at our open days and to anyone who will listen for ten seconds. When they work against us, statistics can motivate us to make excuses. We say that our performance reflects the industries our graduates go into; they have all gone abroad or they like our town so much they don’t want to leave and area doing odd little jobs until they decide what they really want to do. We seek loopholes – are office hours contact hours? Can we ‘reset’ that programme that didn’t do so well, by changing its name or by merging it with a more successful programme? Then there’s outright ‘cheating within the rules’ as when American football wide receivers (the person who tries to catch the ball when the quarterback throws it) once put adhesive on their gloves to enable them to catch better (a loophole in the rules now since closed). I am not going to speculate what the higher education equivalent of gluey hands might be, but statistics can bring out the worst in us. Mark Twain said that we are apt to use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost – to support ourselves rather than to see the right way to go. As Escalus says in Measure for measure, “Some rise by sin and others by virtue fall” – statistics can facilitate our sins and our virtues. In this ‘New World’ of higher education more and more of us are looking back to our defacto ‘patron saint’ Cardinal Newman.

If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society... It is the education which gives a man (sic) a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him (sic) to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistically and to discard what is irrelevant. John Henry Newman, The idea of a University.

Higher Education statistics can lead us to pursue what is irrelevant. Let us seek the truth - the statistics will follow to vindicate us... possibly.

John Canning is Senior Academic Coordinator at the LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, but writes here in a personal capacity. He can be found blogging about matters higher education at his website www.johncanning.net

JAPAN: Global Economy Exposes Japan's Shortage of English-Speaking Graduates

In Japan's business world, they call it the "Rakuten English shock." The country's largest online retailer has told its 6,000 employees that they must be fluent enough in English to converse with one another by next year. Executives who aren't up to speed will be fired; rank-and-file workers will find their path to promotion blocked.

That dramatic move by Rakuten's Harvard Business School-educated founder, Hiroshi Mikitani, is the latest sign that some Japanese companies are accepting a long-held truism: English is the language of global business. It is also, however, exposing a long-term shortage of local university graduates fluent in the world's lingua franca.

Chronicle of Higher Education

Languages for employability video (Leeds Met University)

Graham Webb and colleagues from Leeds Metropolitan University have produced a short video about languages for employability. It was filmed at their recent Language and employability conference which was attended by employers, students and academics.



Leeds Met Languages and Employability Conference Press Release


The coalition government’s education policy changes mean demand for language teachers is set to soar over the next few years. After a decade in which language teaching in schools has declined dramatically (total GCSE entries in modern languages this year were down this year by 43% compared to 2000) the inclusion of a modern foreign language as one of the 5 core subjects of the English Baccalaureate and which count towards school league tables means the focus is back on language study. The School of Languages at Leeds Metropolitan University is already seeing an increase in applications to study languages and more interest teaching languages as a career.

Rai Shacklock, Head of School, said “Over the next 5 to 10 years, qualified teachers that can teach two languages or a language and another key subject will be in high demand, so now is an ideal time to be taking a language degree.” However, teaching is only one of a whole range of careers open to language students as pupils from local Leeds schools heard recently at the Languages and Employability Conference at Leeds Met

Debbie Easton from Enterprise Rent a Car said “We recruit 750 graduates every year and we like language graduates as they can demonstrate good communication skills as well as resilience, confidence and leadership as most have had a year abroad when they had to fend for themselves”.

Fiona Spence, representing the global group ITW, said that they now actively targeted graduate entrants that had not one but two languages because their business needs people who can move between their main operations worldwide. English may be the major global language but people everywhere prefer to do business in their own language, especially if they are considering buying British products.

According to Victoria Boldison, Export Sales Manager of Optimum Medical Solutions, “languages are vital for UK companies as you can target markets that are not in recession even if the UK and Eurozone are”. So, the revival of languages in schools may be just in time to help revive the UK’s economy over the next few years.

Call for contributions: European Journal of Language Policy

European Journal of Language Policy/ Revue européenne de politique linguistique
Call for contributions

Proposals are invited for contributions to the European Journal of Language Policy / Revue européenne de politique linguistique, which is published by Liverpool University Press, in association with the Conseil européen pour les langues / European Language Council, and edited by Michael Kelly (University of Southampton, UK).
This is an international peer-reviewed journal, which has published eight issues since Spring 2009. It addresses major developments in language policy from a European perspective, regarding multilingualism and the diversity of languages as valuable assets in the culture, politics and economics of twenty-first century societies. The journal’s primary focus is on Europe, broadly understood, but it is alert to policy developments in the wider world.
The EJLP/REPL invites proposals or manuscripts of articles studying any aspect of language policy, and any aspect of the area of languages for which policies may need to be developed or changed. It particularly welcomes proposals that provide greater understanding of the factors that contribute to policy-making, and proposals that examine the effects of particular policies on language learning or language use.
The EJLP/REPL presents relevant policy documents and reports, particularly where these contribute to debates and decision-making on language policy in Europe and elsewhere. It invites suggestions for such documents.

Articles and other items are accepted in either English or French. Abstracts of articles will be provided in both languages. Materials may be derived from or refer to texts in other languages, and a website associated with the journal will provide access to texts and materials in a wider range of languages.

The next issue for which contributions are invited will appear in Autumn 2012 Manuscripts for publication should be submitted to the Editor by 30 April 2012. All correspondence should be addressed to Dr Eleanor Quince (E.M.Quince@southampton.ac.uk).

European Journal of Language Policy/Revue européenne de politique linguistique is hosted online by Metapress at http://liverpool.metapress.com/content/121626/, and online access is free to existing subscribers.
October 2011