PLANS to improve foreign language teaching in Scotland are being hampered because most television programmes watched by children are in English, according to a Government minister.
Alasdair Allan, Scotland's Minister for Learning, made the claim as he gave evidence to MSPs on the SNP's language strategy for primary school pupils.
The Scottish Government wants to see every primary school pupil taught two languages in addition to their own by 2020.
The model would see children start learning their first foreign language in P1, followed by a second language in P5.
However, critics argue the plan is unachievable because of scarce resources and insufficient training for teachers. Mr Allan told the Scottish Parliament's European Committee that the importance of languages could not be under-estimated.
He said: "I believe the case for more language learning is pretty self-evident. An ability and a willingness to pick up other languages is hugely beneficial to young people, both culturally and economically in their future lives. There's plenty of evidence multilingual young people have a competitive advantage in the jobs markets."
Mr Allan said attitudes were beginning to change, with pupils more used to hearing other languages in the street and on holiday abroad.
However, he added: "Where it falls down is the fact much of television is American .... and in English."
The minister went on to defend the plans to teach two foreign languages to primary pupils, although he accepted it would present a significant challenge for schools.
He said: "Delivering additional languages from primary one is a bold and ambitious objective.
"There will be significant challenges for schools, but it can be done and some schools are already providing such early access to language learning. As a Government we recognise an earlier start to language learning may be something that raises challenges in terms of schools' capacity to deliver.
"Some teachers may not have language training. Others may wish to update those skills."
In an earlier submission to the committee, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council cast serious doubts over the policy.
Its submission stated: "While we agree with the principle of widening the experience of languages for primary school pupils, we have grave concerns the resource implications have not been considered sufficiently.
"This will require teachers in primary school to hold appropriate qualifications in language teaching.
"This is currently not the case and will require a substantial investment and significant time to make this a reality."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article