As a society, we lack a learning ethos. The main political parties trumpet their belief in the importance of education, yet television, shopping and leisure take pride of place over education in the order of life-style priorities.

Perhaps the key question at this critical point in educational development is not whether our results compare favourably with those of other countries, but whether reform has prepared the service for the demands of a global community. No one could argue that it has.

How have other European countries achieved the relationships from which the UK is marginalised?

Of course, there is no English Channel between other member states - making communication easier and faster for them. Rapprochement has been helped by more positive political attitudes than in the UK.

But a general oiling of community wheels across mainland Europe has come from the understanding that a modern education is deficient unless it includes a second language.

The curriculum here is not “permeated” by a European dimension, as recommended by the National Curriculum Council in 1990. At that time, we were all hoping for the European funds that would provide the kind of opportunities for schools already available for higher education.

At the summit meeting of December 1991, Leon Brittan personally made very clear that “Maastricht would mean more money for schools”. It is disappointing that this Socrates scheme funding is not being fully tapped.

In November 1992, junior minister Nigel Forman told the UK Centre for European Education: “It continues to be the Government’s long-term aim to introduce the teaching of a modern foreign language at primary level.”

Now, three years later, the Labour opposition affirms that it shares that aim.

Only days before Labour’s statement, Nick Tate of the School Curriculum and Assessment Council asked: “Now that 20 per cent of primary schools teach a foreign language, is this something we need to consider as a future element in a revised national curriculum?” Inevitably, there will be objections to a new initiative, another subject, an extra expense, an added burden. That is understandable, but rooted in the past.

The Primary French Project of the 1970s was declared a failure, but the world is a very different place a quarter of a century later - and, arguably, much of the new, exciting practice at primary level has grown out of the wide range of early experience.

The starting point for the accelerating debate on foreign language teaching in primary schools is that it is inevitable. To maintain there must be a five-year moratorium on the curriculum is a fantasy. We have a moral obligation to consider the present generation of children as well as those in the future. We cannot afford to wait.

Up to now, it is the advantages of being European that have been emphasised. It is time to tell our children that the ability to operate internationally has become an absolute requirement.

It has been demonstrated all around the world that young children have a facility for learning languages. They are receptive mimics. They learn a language piecemeal and use it imaginatively as a social tool.

But we have considered the learning of a second language as an academic discipline rather than as an extension of a child’s personality, and we have never quantified the added value it can give to other learning.

Now we must accept that if we want “competitiveness”, we must operate in the customer’s language to gain a competitive edge.

On the eve of 1996, the European Year of Lifelong Learning, let us adopt its purpose to promote “the personal development of individuals and their integration into working life and society”.

Happy New Year!

George Varnava is president of the National Association of Headteachers