The HEPI league table for language provision gives statistical form to a problem that has been developing for some time. Drawing on Department for Education performance data, the report shows that in 2025 only 220 secondary schools in England, approximately 5% of the secondary sector, had Modern Language GCSE entries equal to or greater than the number of pupils reaching the end of Key Stage 4. In most schools, there was fewer than one Modern Language GCSE entry for every 2 pupils, and HEPI notes that GCSE entries in Modern Languages have fallen from over half a million in 2004 to under one-third of a million in 2025, despite growth in the Key Stage 4 cohort. (hepi.ac.uk)
These figures are important because they make visible a pattern of institutional withdrawal – schools are moving away from offering languages at GCSE level due to lack of uptake, which then extends into A-levels, and upwards to university applications. Nicholas Hillman OBE, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Policy Institute, is right to connect individual benefit with national capacity when he argues that “learning a language has enormous benefits for individual learners, but it also has benefits for the whole country. It enables a fuller understanding of different cultures, makes it easier for us to engage with the rest of the world and promotes international trade. Yet when any educational institution cuts or cancels their language provision, it is very hard to bring back afterwards.” (hepi.ac.uk)
The problem is not just uptake – it's how we think about languages
We share that concern, but we also argue that the decline cannot be understood only as a problem of uptake, staffing, accountability or student motivation. These factors are real, and need to be addressed, but the HEPI report also points toward a more basic question about how languages are named, valued and made available within English education. The term “Modern Foreign Languages” has carried a policy meaning for so long that it can appear neutral. Historically, “modern” distinguished living languages from Latin and Ancient Greek, and “foreign” marked languages associated with elsewhere. In today’s classrooms, however, that terminology sits uneasily alongside the multilingual realities of pupils whose linguistic repertoires may include Arabic, Polish, Urdu, Turkish, Bengali, Portuguese, Gujarati, Punjabi or many other languages used in families, neighbourhoods, faith settings, digital spaces and local economies. It also sits uneasily with the fact that in England, other languages of the UK are not taught in schools – a student in Durham cannot choose to study Welsh or Gaelic, but has to choose a ‘foreign’ language.
I would argue that this language of “MFL” is not only not neutral, but does conceptual and practical damage to attitudes to languages in schools. It sustains a hierarchy in which a narrow set of European languages is treated as the ordinary curriculum offer, while home and community languages are too often treated as peripheral, supplementary or administratively inconvenient, and other languages of the UK are simply absent. The point here is not to diminish French, German or Spanish - these languages matter to some people, and are valuable in and of themselves as languages. The point is that a national languages strategy built around assumptions about which languages count cannot adequately respond to the society schools already serve, or the society we want to build.
Hetan Shah, Chief Executive of the British Academy, makes this argument directly in his response to the HEPI report: “Further, the languages currently on offer are often not representative of our national linguistic diversity, or of the specific diversity of the school’s locality. It is important that schools are able to recognise and provide qualifications in home, heritage and community languages in order to harness the full potential of our multilingual society.” (hepi.ac.uk)
This observation should move the debate beyond the familiar question of how to persuade more pupils to take up languages by perpetuating the current system. A more adequate question concerns the relationship between school provision and the wider communities in which schools sit, and the aggregate of languages spoken across the UK. Schools should be supported to understand which languages pupils already know, encounter and use; to map local supplementary and community language provision; and to create clearer routes into accreditation where pupils have developing competence in home, heritage or community languages. ASCL guidance on home, heritage and community languages recommends practical steps of this kind, including surveying pupils’ language skills from Year 7, auditing staff language capacity, engaging with supplementary schools and supporting pupils to gain qualifications in languages they already use beyond school. (ascl.org.uk). We also need to think more critically about how schools across the UK can support the revitalisation of languages that are of and from the UK and endangered, rather than leaving them only as a concern of the devolved nations.
There are, of course, many possible objections. Some will argue that school language provision cannot be endlessly localised, that qualification routes are finite and that timetables, staffing and accountability pressures limit what schools can realistically provide. Others will argue that there is only merit in learning a language that has a market value, not languages of minority communities and endangered historic languages. These objections are substantial. They are also the reason why tweaking the current system will never be enough. Awarding bodies, government, trusts, local authorities, university departments and community language providers all have a role in building pathways that make language accreditation more accessible, more meaningful, and less dependent on exceptional local efforts.
A second, but no less important issue, is the curriculum and assessment itself. Many pupils experience language learning as a sequence of discrete tasks: vocabulary lists, pronunciation drills, grammar exercises and rehearsed scenarios that are detached from meaningful use. Vocabulary, phonics, grammar and accuracy are all necessary when learning a language, this is not the issue. The issue is curricular proportion and purpose -are we learning to communicate, or learning to be tested? When language learning is organised primarily as the acquisition of separated components, designed to an exam specification, pupils can struggle to see what the language is for, especially if it is a language that they feel no connection to or desire to learn. A more compelling model would still teach linguistic knowledge explicitly, but it would connect that knowledge to communication, interpretation and participation: reading real texts, understanding media, speaking across generations, navigating travel, engaging with culture, and recognising how language changes what can be understood and done.
It's time to rethink Languages Education
How languages are frames is also important. If students are not choosing languages, it means we, the education sector, are not selling them properly. Pupils should encounter the connection between languages and diplomacy, trade, public services, research, technology, creative industries, community leadership, travel and social relationships. The British Academy has repeatedly argued that language skills matter for employability, international engagement, social understanding and social cohesion. (thebritishacademy.ac.uk). If pupils rarely hear that case, or hear it only as an abstract claim that languages are “good for the future”, then the sector has failed to translate its own evidence into forms that young people can use when making curriculum choices.
Rather than trying to make small shifts, we need to start with some big ones. Moving from “MFL” to “Languages Education” would not solve the structural problems by itself, but it would name the field more accurately and make space for taught international languages, home languages, indigenous languages, community languages and classical languages. We should expand access to GCSE accreditation in home, heritage and community languages, including through better exam-entry support and stronger partnerships with supplementary schools. We should develop curriculum models that treat purposeful use as central and provide pathways for meaningful credentials beyond a GCSE. We should build provision from local language ecologies and connect languages more explicitly to careers education and civic education, so that pupils understand languages as resources for work, relationship, public life and intellectual development.
The HEPI league table is useful because it makes provision, or lack of provision, visible. Its deeper value, however, lies in the questions it forces us to confront. Why has language learning become so precarious? Which languages are being protected, and which are being overlooked? Whose linguistic knowledge is recognised as educational capital? What would a system look like if it began from the multilingual capacities already present in schools and communities?
We argue that the decline in language learning requires more than putting a finger in the dyke. It requires a serious rethinking of Languages Education: terminology, curriculum purposes, relationship with community languages and languages of the UK, and how we message the importance of language learning to students. ‘Modern’ ‘Foreign’ language is no longer relevant, or sufficient. Building a languages education provision that fits a multilingual 21st century, forward-thinking nation requires bold thinking, rooted in a clear understanding of why languages education matters, now more than ever, and why all students deserve a language education that recognises this.
Write your awesome label here.