GCSE results hailed a success but what future do languages have at GCSE?

For the 23rd year in a row, the pass rate at GCSE has increased. This is good news for the pupils who received their results yesterday and their teachers and tutors deserve the greatest praise for encouraging them. However, the big loser in the statistics which accompanied the results is modern languages.

I studied French and German as well as Latin right up to Higher (Scottish A-level equivalent) level. I felt inspired by all my languages teachers. I recognised how important it was to speak a foreign language and I was very fortunate because I had the opportunity to learn French from the age of 7 at a lunchtime club. I suppose that I have always been surrounded by foreign language. My parents both speak French and my mum's degree is in French and German. We spent all our summer holidays when I was young in France and so learning languages became very natural. In fact, I am currently learning Spanish and I absolutely love it.

So what has caused the decline in languages? I believe there are two key factors - the fact that since 2004, taking a language at GCSE is no longer compulsory and that the teaching of modern languages in schools is failing pupils. A blog about this subject will always run the risk of sounding generalised and so I apologise in advance.

There is certainly an issue about the fact that modern languages are not mandatory at GCSE. This position should be reversed. Nowadays, many pupils sit GCSE's a year or two years early with some pupils gaining up to 14 or 15 GCSE's. It is conceivable that none of these could be in a modern language. We cannot expect a child at the age of 13 or 14 to exclude the possibility of studying a modern language. These are cliches but having a modern language increases employability considerably, particularly in a recession and improves key skills such as retaining information, command of the English language and communicating with others. It is important that teachers encourage pupils to have as balanced and as wide a range of subjects at GCSE as possible. Pupils should not be discounting modern languages before they have completed their GCSE's.

The second issue relates to an image problem which modern languages have, coupled with serious concerns about the teaching of modern languages. The image problem is that modern languages are not cool. Pupils in the MTV generation, where they are unlikely to encounter anything in the media or press which is not in English, cannot see the long-term advantages of learning a language. We need to get the message out to young people that if you want to travel around the world on your gap year or get a job working for an international institution, you will struggle without the ability to speak a modern language. We all know that once you can command one language reasonably well, learning others become far easier.

In terms of teaching languages, the technological advances which have been made over the past few years. When I first started learning a language, there was no Youtube, no online newspapers and magazines, no computer games and we simply worked out of textbooks. The sad fact is that thousands of pupils are still simply learning from textbooks. Why? Teachers need to be encouraged to engage with their pupils with these new forms of media. I used to have a penpal in the Ivory Coast. We would write and it would take weeks and weeks to receive a reply. Now, I could find a penpal and we could e-mail every day if we wanted. Imagine what an improvement that would make! I try and use technology as much as possible in my tutoring sessions and for the past couple of month, I have been fortunate enough to use an iPad. It really does make a difference and you can see how enthusiastic the pupils are about it. In a classroom, interactive whiteboards or even projectors can revolutionise pupils' attitudes to modern languages.

However, as great as this technology is, teachers must be aware that it is no substitute for good teaching. Pupils need an excellent grounding in grammar so that they can understand a video clip of a French TV show on Youtube or read an e-book. Unfortunately, there are some schools that persist in sticking a Powerpoint presentation on and allowing the pupils to copy the information about grammar. That is not teaching. The pupils become confused and will become turned off modern languages very quickly. As technology advances, there needs to be very good training for teachers so that they know how to use technology in an effective way in the classroom. That way, modern languages become exciting, different and pupils will actually want to study modern languages further. Languages will cease to be seen as difficult if they are engaging and if pupils can see the benefits to their future careers by learning a language.

So for modern languages uptake to improve and to get French back into the top 10 of subjects, we need to look at all aspects of the teaching of this subject. In the past 10 years, the number of pupils studying French has dropped by around 48%. This is already having serious repercussions at university level and in the workplace. It is much more difficult to learn a language at 30 or 40 than it is at 13 or 14 when a pupil's brain resembles a sponge! This is my personal plea to the government - please reinstate compulsory language learning at GCSE level. Choice is not always a good thing and in this instance, it is not in pupils' best interests.