The man behind a public petition hopes to establish that primary initial teacher education should give more prominence to modern languages than at present.
Jonathan Robertson is calling on the Scottish Parliament to decide whether guidelines on the standards for ITE place a legal obligation on the Government, as well as the General Teaching Council for Scotland, to accredit only programmes with some form of core modern languages training.
He said: “Hopefully, the petition will be examined by the education committee and it can determine whether Scottish ministers and the GTCS have circumvented guidelines in the approval of ITE programmes, such as the B.Ed at Aberdeen University, which only offers modern languages for primary schools training as a non-compulsory elective.”
Mr Robertson is a former policy adviser at the East of Scotland European Consortium representing 13 local authorities. Last year it warned that modern languages training must become mandatory in initial teacher education for primary schools if Scotland is to avoid floundering on the margins of the global economy.
The petition was lodged on September 14 and closes on Sunday, which is European Day of Languages.
http:epetitions.scottish.parliament.uklist_petitions.asp.