DESPITE recent cautiously rising numbers of pupils learning modern languages, the subject is far from thriving in Scottish schools.

But what if the answer was to offer a modern language that’s not spoken, but signed?

Last September the Scottish Government took the step, unique in the UK, of passing the British Sign Language (Scotland) Bill to give British Sign Language (BSL) and deafblind tactile BSL the status of languages in their own right, on a par with Gaelic.

This was a leap forward from its existing status, which was as a minority language, recognised in 2003, and protected under equalities legislation by the Westminster parliament.

The ambitious - yet entirely reasonable - aim of the Bill is to ensure full inclusion for BSL users living in Scotland.

Currently, BSL is used at home by more than 12,500 people in Scotland there are around 6000 people with BSL as a first language.

However, there are only around 70 sign language interpreters, a figure often compared to Finland, where the population size is comparable but where there are 500 interpreters. Inclusion is impossible without easy access to communication.

How to tackle this?

Well, the first graduates of an innovative new MA in BSL passed out of Edinburgh’s Heriot Watt University last week and the man in charge of the course, Professor Graham Turner, chairman of Interpreting and Translation Studies, wants to see BSL taught in schools alongside modern languages. Just as it is at Heriot Watt.

Mr Turner said: “School children are voting with their feet and not choosing to study languages.

“If we want our children to learn languages, and we do, then offer children the chance to learn BSL.

“If you offer school kids the opportunity to learn BSL, not only do they think it’s really cool, but you are giving them the chance to benefit from all the same cognitive advantages as learning a spoken language and gets them thinking in quite different ways.”

Anecdotally, Professor Turner says young people who have been offered the chance to learn BSL report it to be "really cool" - a far cry from the response to French or German.

Deaf charities have often spoken of a desire to get more people at least learning the BSL alphabet and some basic signs in order to be able to have the ability to communicate with Deaf people they live and work beside.

Perhaps a young generation of school pupils learning BSL is the way to realise Scotland’s ambition of full inclusion for the Deaf community.

Mr Turner added: “Scotland really values diversity and as part of that we must value what disabled people bring to society.

“And learning BSL is a really, really good way to do that and part of what the BSL act is all about - valuing the diversity of Scotland and making the most of what we can learn from different communities.

“Last year a deaf patient in a Dundee hospital was left for nearly three days unable to communicate because no one arranged a sign language interpreter.

“These sorts of things should never happen again.”