§ Lord Bleaseasked Her Majesty's Government:
What provisions they will make in Northern Ireland to ensure an adequate supply of teachers qualified to undertake the developments of the foreign language programme in primary schools recommended by the National Curriculum Committee for Modern Foreign Languages (October 1990), the House of Lords European Communities Committee (HL Paper 48, 1989–90) and the Modern Languages Advisers of the Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards (October 1990).
§ The Paymaster General (Lord Belstead)At a time when the demand for newly qualified primary teachers in Northern Ireland is falling, I am sure we are right to ask the teacher training institutions to concentrate their efforts on the subjects which are compulsory elements in the Northern Ireland curriculum. Foreign languages are not a compulsory part of the curriculum for primary schools.
The reports from the National Curriculum Working Group on Modern Foreign Languages 11 to 16 and the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities have been considered by the Secretary of State for Education and Science, who remains of the view that foreign languages should not at present be part of the primary stages of the National Curriculum in England and Wales.
Consideration of the issue in Northern Ireland led to similar conclusions which do not support a change in my department's policy on teacher training provision in Northern Ireland. I will however keep the position under review.
In the meantime, the Department of Education for Northern Ireland has recently agreed to fund a 40 per cent. increase in the intake to the modern languages PGCE course at Queen's University, Belfast, in the light of a sharply increased forecast demand for language teachers in secondary schools, where languages will for the first time become a compulsory part of the curriculum from 1992.