Ethnic Minority Languages

HC Deb 29 June 1993 vol 227 cc465-6W

Mr. Robert Ainsworth

To ask the Secretary of State for Education what plans he has to ensure that schools with a high proportion of children with an ethnic minority background continue to be able to offer mother tongue language classes.

Mr. Robin Squire

All secondary pupils are required to study a modern foreign language as a national curriculum foundation subject. Nineteen languages qualify as a foundation subject. Schools must offer at least one of the eight working languages of the European Community and may offer 11 other languages of cultural and commercial importance—Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin or Cantonese Chinese, modern Hebrew, Panjabi, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.

To meet the national curriculum requirement, pupils choose one modern foreign language from among those

Sources of Award	1990–91 Expenditure £ million	1991–92 Expenditure £ million
	u/grad	p/grad	u/grad	p/grad
England and Wales
1. DFE and LEAs	11.068	0.008	132.008	0.011
2. MAFF	—	0.002	—	0.002
Scotland (SOED)	22.596	—	23.756	—
Northern Ireland (DENI)	2.515	0.042	3.718	0.055
United Kingdom Postgraduate Awards Schemes
1.Research Councils	—	1.306	—	1.360
2.British Academy	—	30.098	—	30.172
1 Provisional.
2 Undergraduate and postgraduate awards expenditure combined.
3 Estimate.

Mr. Trimble

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the answer of 22 June,Official Report, column 123, how much of the funds for the various EC student mobility programmes comes to the United Kingdom.

Mr. Boswell

In 1993–94 the United Kingdom's allocation of the funding available for student mobility grants to support EC student mobility within the ERASMUS programme is expected to be some £6.99 million or 14.2 per cent. of the total programme funding available for this purpose; and for LINGUA £0.65 million—13.4 per cent.

As leading participants and co-ordinators of inter-university co-operation programmes (ICPs) within these

offered by the school. Pupils with one of these languages as their mother tongue may therefore choose to study that language as a foundation subject if the school is able to offer it. All schools, including primary schools, are also free to provide languages outside the national curriculum if demand exists and they have the resources to meet it.