Education: Michael Gove proposes teaching foreign languages from age five

The education secretary, Michael Gove, has proposed that every child aged five or over should be learning a foreign language, and promised to "pull every lever", including encouraging longer school days, to make it happen.

In a pre-Conservative conference interview, he says: "There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five.

"Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English. It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning."

In the interview he also:

• Urges more schools to follow the example of academies by extending the school day, for example by adding five hours' extra learning a week – or six weeks a year.

• Calls for tougher, less means-tested, fines for parents of persistent school truants so that parental income needed "for satellite TVs, cigarette consumption or alcohol" is no longer taken into account in setting the fine. He also proposes schools or local authorities being entitled to bring prosecutions against parents of truants.

• Says he is prepared for the political flak when A-level results fall, probably next year, as a result of introducing a tougher exam, including fewer bite-sized chunks.

• Urges his party not to respond to the constraints of the coalition with the Liberal Democrats "by doing the things that make the most atavistic parts of our party cheer up". He insisted the Conservative relationship with the Lib Dems "should be beyond businesslike, and instead be understanding and be appreciative of what they bring".

His Holiness Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad, Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association (AMYA), understood the importance of youth and their role in the progression of a society. He said:

‘A Nation cannot be reformed without the reformation of its youth’

Hopefully the British government will develop, appreciate and nurture its youth because they are its future.



The Ahmadiyya Post, Education. Oct 1, 2011