Students should be offered 'golden handshakes' to encourage them to train as high school modern languages teachers, according to a Scottish Conservative leadership hopeful.
Jamie Greene, the party's former education spokesman, who is one of six MSPs standing to succeed Douglas Ross, set out his policy ideas in an article for the Herald on Sunday.
His intervention follows a steep decline in pupils studying French and German at Higher level in recent years, though there has continued to be high numbers taking Spanish.
Mr Greene also said he would like "at least two foreign languages available in every single Scottish high school by the end of the next Scottish Parliament in 2031".
He said he hoped the Scottish Government would consider offering student language teachers a golden 'bonjour', though he declined to say how much the sum should be. Initiatives run by the UK government to attract students to teach some subjects have been worth around to £10,000.
Mr Greene also called for Scottish ministers to consider reintroducing a requirement for languages to be studied for the first four years of secondary school and for their UK counterparts to make it easier for native speakers to get visas to work as language assistants in Scottish schools.
"I want to see young Scots get ahead not just in the domestic market, but become more competitive and sought after around the world. Scotland is home to amazing talent, but we can become world leading. To do that, however, we need to up our game on foreign language education, which has seen a disgraceful fall in uptake over recent years," said Mr Greene.
"I am a passionate advocate of modern language education and many young people I meet share that enthusiasm. It opens doors, unlocks opportunities and builds friendships across the world.
"Over the past few years, we’ve seen a worrying 25% reduction in the number of young people studying a language at higher level. Some Scottish universities have been consulting on scrapping their single honours courses in French, German and Spanish due to a steep fall in applicants. Something has to change.
"Perhaps we reinstate the requirement for languages to be studied for the first four years of secondary school. Perhaps we need a marked shift from grammar-obsessed textbooks in favour of engaging content, moving from our “talking about the language” to a “talking in the language” approach. Perhaps we simply need more language teachers and language assistants."
He added: "The Scottish Government must seriously consider golden handshakes and incentives to attract new language teachers. Equally, the UK Government must be open to specialist visas for language teachers and make it easier and more desirable for language assistants to work in our schools.
"There is mutual benefit in the export of our English language training and the welcoming of native speakers through an established route. As an ambitious target, I want to see at least two foreign languages available in every single Scottish high school by the end of the next Scottish Parliament in 2031."
There has been a steep fall in students taking French and German at Higher level, according to figures from the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
In 2019, 3415 students took French Higher and 785 took Higher German; however these numbers fell to 2300 and 550 this year for each respectively.
Spanish meanwhile saw larger numbers, with 3055 taking taking Higher in 2019 and 3035 this year.
The Herald on Sunday revealed last year that a senior European diplomat urged the then First Minister Humza Yousaf to reverse the trend in the falling number of pupils in Scotland studying German and other languages.
The German Ambassador to the UK Miguel Berger raised his concerns with Mr Yousaf about the matter when he met him at Bute House in Edinburgh.
Mr Berger said it was noted in their meeting that the Republic of Ireland was a "good example" in terms of a high uptake in the subject among school children there.
He said the fall in pupils taking German at school is not unique to Scotland and is part of a wider UK trend.
Work is underway between the German Government and the Department of Education in London to help increase pupil uptake of the language south of the Border, he told the Herald on Sunday and he hoped the Scottish Government would use similar initiatives in Scottish schools.
In Scotland 505 pupils sat German Higher in 2022, and in 2023 the number rose to 520 - down from 1051 in 2013.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government is already providing bursaries of £20,000 to encourage career-changers to become teachers in certain subjects. In 2024-25, this scheme was extended to include modern languages, recognising the importance we place on enabling young people to learn languages.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel