WHY ARE FEWER STUDENTS CHOOSING

Yesterday's GCSE results showed another alarming drop in the number of candidates taking a modern foreign language exam. French fell by 13.2 per cent since last year to 236,189 – meaning just over one in three youngsters in the age cohort had sat it. German went down by 14.2 per cent to 90,311 and even Spanish, which has shown a rise in recent years, fell by 0.5 per cent to 62,143. According to heads and teachers' leaders, the slump will mean a reduction in pupils' job opportunities when they leave school.

The main reason is the Government's decision, which came into force two years ago, to make languages a voluntary subject on the national curriculum from the age of 14. This year's cohort is the first to have gone through the two years of GCSE study with this edict in place.

There are other contributory factors, too. While language take-up has declined, subjects such as media, film and television studies (up 25.9 per cent to 56,521 this year) have shown an increase – prompting headteachers’ leaders to warn that some schools are encouraging pupils to take subjects which are perceived to be easier so as to boost their ranking in government exam league tables. There is also research to show that employers when looking to fill a vacancy are less likely to look for a candidate's languages qualifications than their passes in Maths and English. This message, it is argued, has also got through to schools with the result that they are less likely to push a child into taking languages.

According to a survey by the Centre for Information on Language Teaching, two-thirds of state schools no longer make languages compulsory from the age of 14. The study shows a stark divide between the state and independent sector – where 97 per cent of schools still make languages compulsory. It has led language teachers to warn that language learning is becoming a preserve of the middle classes, with struggling inner-city schools the most likely to abandon compulsory lessons.

Since 2001, the year before ministers made the decision to make the subject voluntary, figures have shown that – while the number of GCSE's being taken has increased by 100,000, French has decreased from 347,007 to 236,189 (a drop of 32 per cent) and German gone down from 135,133 to 90,311 (a decrease of 33 per cent). Interestingly, though, the impact on A-level take-up is not so great with both French and German registering an improvement in take-up this summer. The feeling is the high-flyers are still sticking with the subject and taking it through to A-level – enhancing the idea that it is becoming a middle-class preserve.

Ministers will privately admit they had not realised the extent to which languages provision would decline when they first decided to make it voluntary. But there were concerns expressed at the time. The ambassadors to the UK of France, Spain, Germany and Italy combined to warn – through an interview in Thelndependent –that it would have catastrophic consequences. They also revealed that it was becoming harder to continue with cultural exchanges between schools because there were fewer in the UK with sufficient language provision to make them worthwhile. This, they argued, had the potential for diminishing the UK's standing in Europe because the country was being seen as the language "dunce" of Europe.

Notwithstanding this, the Government went ahead with its decision as it was worried by its inability to cut truancy rates amongst 14 to 16-year-olds. Ministers argued that there was no point in forcing youngsters who had no interest in languages to study the subject. If they were bored with the curriculum, they would simply bunk off school. As a palliative to the languages lobby, they launched a major drive to improve the take-up of languages in primary school – announcing that, from the end of the decade, every child would have the right to learn a language from the age of seven. For the first time, too, they started training language teachers to work in primary schools. Ministers also introduced a languages ladder learning scheme – which works like music in that you can take a grade exam in the subject whenever you are ready for it – to supplement GCSE's.

No, and ministers would acknowledge this. The primary school initiative has seen a rise in the take-up amongst seven-year-olds, with more than one-in-four primary schools now offering the subject. The trouble, teachers argue, is they will not work their way through to taking GCSEs for nine years – leaving language teaching in the doldrums for far too long.

As a result of the slump last year, Jacqui Smith, the then schools minister, wrote to all secondary schools asking them to set a target for getting at least 50 per cent of their pupils to take a language at GCSE. The target

– came into force immediately and schools were told that Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, would consider whether they had reached it in making their inspection report on a school. This year's results would seem to indicate a large number of state schools have failed to reach the target.

Economically, it may reduce the UK's effectiveness in competing in the global market. Many foreign customers are unimpressed by the fact that Britons they deal with have little or no language skills. Culturally, our children are being deprived of a necessary tool to explore and understand the wider world.

An inquiry into language teaching - set up by the Nuffield Foundation and chaired by Sir Trevor MacDonald, the ITN newscaster – reported that the situation would only improve if a language qualification (I. e. at GCSE level) was made compulsory for anyone seeking to study for a degree in higher education.

It was one of the more outrageous moments in the story of the Bush administration's illegal domestic wiretapping. Almost a year ago, congressional Democrats called for a review of the Justice Department's role in the program. But the department investigators assigned to do the job were unable to proceed because the White House, at President George W. Bush's personal direction, refused to give them the necessary security clearance.

Now the president, for reasons we can't help thinking might have something to do with the midterm elections, has changed his mind. The White House will give Justice Department inspectors the required clearance, and a review will go forward.

That's all to the good, as long as the investigation is not intended to pre-empt any efforts by the new Democratic majority to conduct its own congressional review of the wiretap program. The Justice Department inquiry will hardly do the full job.

The department's inspector general, Glenn Fine, has already said that the question of whether the program was legal is beyond his jurisdiction. Instead, he will investigate whether department employees followed the rules governing the program, established in a secret executive order signed by Bush in October 2001. Since the rules will presumably stay secret, the investigation will not even clarify just how far from established legal standards Bush strayed when he authorized the government to eavesdrop on Americans' international calls and e-mail without a court-issued warrant.

The Justice Department inquiry also will do nothing to fix the biggest problem with Bush's eavesdropping program, which is that - once again - he ignored existing law and instead tried to create a system outside the law, resting on his dangerously expansive claims of executive power.

If Bush had wanted to conduct the wiretapping within the law, he could have quite easily done so, using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Fine could still provide an important - if limited - service. The investigation might help Congress understand whether FISA needs updating – something the administration has been loath to discuss as long as it has been able to end-run the court.

The question of the wiretap program's constitutionality is making its way through the courts and should ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. Congress should not be satisfied with Fine's very limited investigation. It should mount its own independent inquiry into how the war on terror, and American civil liberties, are being affected by an eavesdropping program about which the American people have been told so little.

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