I ALWAYS find it rather creepy when the Scottish Government sends out press releases which include pre-approved quotes of support from other bodies.

There is something vaguely Orwellian about the practice, which typically sees a policy announcement backed in glowing, but rather vacuous terms from a variety of interest groups.

The practice is worrying because the quotes usually do not provide an informed overview of the merits or otherwise of the policy in question, but simply express a kind of generic welcome.

The suspicion this is done because journalists are thought of as either too busy or too lazy to seek out an alternative view is equally worrying - partly because it is sometimes true.

My concerns were piqued this week when the Scottish Government announced funding of more than £7 million to help teach modern languages in primary schools, a development reported in The Herald today.

This is a welcome announcement which should make a difference to the levels of training councils can afford to offer teachers, as well as allowing them to employ more specialist language assistants.

But, there are also significant concerns about the unrealistic nature of the Scottish Government's ambitions for languages in the primary sector which will not be resolved by this funding announcement alone.

Earlier this year, official representatives from Germany, Switzerland and Austria wrote to Dr Alasdair Allan, the minister for learning, warning that current policies to expand language learning may actually lead to the "ultimate demise" of German in Scottish schools.

These wider concerns had no place in the official press release, which is uniformly positive, even with contributions from independent bodies such as the Association of Directors of Education for Scotland and experts from the Scotland's National Centre for Languages, based at Strathclyde University.

The only vague note of caution comes from Douglas Chapman, education spokesman for Cosla, who hinted at the need for significant future funding when he was quoted as saying: "We are happy to continue to work with government to ensure that the policy is resourced for future years."

To be clear, it is likely primary pupils across Scotland will benefit from this extra funding, which supports the government's 1+2 policy to have all pupils learning at least two modern languages, in addition to their mother tongue, by the time they leave primary.

But that should not be used to mask a number of fundamental flaws which need to be addressed if this policy is going to be successful.

As education consultant Dr Dan Tierney highlighted in his comments to The Herald, primary teachers in Spain have 18 years of language learning compared to their Scottish counterparts who "will be lucky to have 18 days".

Mr Tierney is also clear the current strategy is too broad, with current languages identified for primary schools including Arabic, Chinese, French, Gaelic, German, Italian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish and Urdu.

Unless the Scottish Government prioritises some of these, there is a danger pupils will leave primary with a wide variety of language experiences that cannot be coherently built upon when they arrive in secondary school.