In the early days of lockdown, when things were looking rather bleak - people were just getting to grips with juggling home, school and work, and panic buying was de rigueur - I had a much-needed uplifting conversation with the director of Scotland’s National Centre for Languages (Scilt) who was convinced language learning could thrive in lockdown and give a much-needed boost to pupils’ mental health.
People couldn’t go abroad - they weren’t even meant to leave their own homes more than once a day - but languages were good at “widening horizons and opening doors” and encouraging “reaching out to the wider world”, argued Fhiona Mackay.
So, a plan was speedily put in place to deliver live online lessons in Spanish, Arabic, Italian, Gaelic and Mandarin suitable for primary and secondary students, as well as delivering national qualification courses in French, German, Italian, Mandarin and Gaelic. Course places were snapped up.
This enthusiastic response is, of course, not always the experience of language teachers.
In Scotland, the number of pupils pursuing languages to qualifications level has been on a downward trajectory for some time.
There has been a lot of talk about what the long-term impact of lockdown and the rapid development of digital learning will be. When it comes to languages, you can really see that a well-thought-out online offer just might help schools deliver.
On paper, at least, it looks as though Scotland is ambitious about language learning. The Scottish government’s answer is the so-called 1+2 languages policy. The expectation is that pupils should learn two languages as well as their mother tongue. They are meant to start the first foreign language in P1 and the second in P5, and continue until at least S3.
But this commitment to languages is, to a large extent, not reflected in reality.
A 2019 survey of schools obtained by Tes Scotland using freedom of information legislation found that more than half of primary schools had yet to introduce the teaching of a second foreign language.
That same survey also revealed that almost a third of Scottish secondaries were failing to teach their students a modern language for the first three years of high school.
Figures in primary were better for a first foreign language: 88 per cent of primary schools said they were managing to deliver.
The main barriers highlighted by primaries to teaching languages were competing priorities, teacher training and teacher confidence.
In a country where ever-decreasing numbers of pupils pursue languages to qualification level, it’s no surprise that schools are struggling to find the staff with the skills to teach them.
Could this be where digital learning comes in? Scilt - at very short notice - created a national language-learning offer. Could the same be done again? And what could popular apps such as Duolingo add?
Interestingly, the body Scilt partnered with to deliver its lockdown language classes was the Western Isles e-Sgoil, which was launched in 2016 to work out the best way to use technology to beam lessons into schools, largely because of the shortage of Gaelic teachers. This was making it tough for the authority to deliver on its goal that all pupils should have access to six secondary subjects through the medium of Gaelic.
You could argue the Scottish government is in the same boat. It has an ambitious target but it’s not delivering it and time is ticking - the 1+2 languages policy is meant to be in place by August next year.
It is likely that lockdown and coronavirus disruption will be used as a reason to delay the introduction of this policy. But wouldn’t it be better to use lockdown and the hard-won lessons from homeschooling to inspire a different approach - and actually give schools the support they need to make this policy happen?
This article originally appeared in the 24 July 2020 issue under the headline “Languages in lockdown flourished - continuing is as easy as 1+2”
