Four-year-olds enrolling in English primary schools this year will be the first generation of children who will have to learn a modern language from the age of seven, writes Debbie Andalo.
The move, announced by education secretary Alan Johnson, is an attempt to try to turn around the country's appallingly poor record in creating school leavers and graduates who are literate in a language other than their mother tongue.
The decision to make learning a modern language compulsory from the age of seven to 14 reflected recommendations by Lord Dearing in his review of school language policy.
His report failed to suggest a return to making foreign languages compulsory at GCSE. Perhaps this was not surprising given that Lord Dearing, a government education advisor, is a keen believer in shrinking the number of core GCSE subjects in order to increase pupil choice.
But there was disappointment in some quarters that Lord Dearing did not use the opportunity of his review to prompt the government into a U-turn over its decision in 2002 to take modern languages out of core GCSE.
Leaders of British industry yesterday reiterated their concern that school leavers and graduates who lack modern language skills are increasingly at a disadvantage in the global jobs market.
Management consultancy Hay Group warned British businesses were already recruiting MBA graduates from China in a bid to remain commercially competitive. The UK expects to rely on £200 billion sales to Chinese by 2009.
All MBAs offered by European universities, including those in the UK, should include a Chinese module to boost language skills, say Hay.
So should Dearing have heeded the warnings of business and made modern languages compulsory at GCSE? Or is his recommendation that language courses should be made available to teenagers with the promise of more overseas trips and work placements the answer?
Last Friday the education secretary Alan Johnson stirred some political feathers when he told a conference of headteachers that the government may have got it wrong over its reforms for vocational diplomas for 14 to 19-year-olds.
Will Mr Johnson be forced to put his hand up again and admit that mistakes were made over modern language reforms too?
