§ Tony BaldryTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) what level of funding has been required from secondary schools in relation to offering Mandarin on the curriculum in the next financial year; and what level of funding has been allocated to the subject; [90383]
(2) how many secondary schools that are (a) providing and (b) pursuing specialist status on languages will have the teaching of Mandarin on the curriculum; [90384]
(3) how many secondary schools taught Mandarin as an extra-curricular subject in (a) 1997 and (b) 2002; and how many taught Mandarin as part of the curriculum in (i) 1997 and (ii) 2002; [90368]
(4) what resources were allocated to train teachers to teach Mandarin in (a) 1997 and (b) 2002. [90385]
§ Mr. MilibandThe Department does not allocate funding for the teaching of specific individual languages. The National Curriculum requirement is that all maintained secondary schools should offer one of the working languages of European Union. Over and above that, it is for schools to decide which and how many additional languages they choose to offer. There are no specific resources allocated by the Department to train teachers in Mandarin. It is up to Initial Teacher Training providers to choose which languages to include in the courses they offer. However, the Government does allocate £300,000 per year to the British Council run UK-China Educational Co-operation programme, which includes language immersion courses in Mandarin Chinese for teachers and pupils and the exchange of language assistants.
Although there is a strong language learning element to the programme, the UK-China Educational Cooperation programme, which has been running since 2000, also provides grants for school linking visits, joint curriculum projects, electronic curriculum links and head teacher study visits.
There are no figures available on how many language colleges offer Mandarin but 50 of the 157 language colleges offer Chinese. Aspiring language colleges are not required to give advance notice to the Department of the languages they intend to include in their applications so it is not possible to indicate how many intend to teach Mandarin. However language colleges are encouraged to diversify their language provision and Chinese continues to be a popular choice for applicant schools. Specialist applications are assessed by independent assessors and are not approved by the Department on the basis of a specified range of modern foreign languages.
From an analysis of OFSTED inspection reports for 1997–98, no mention is made of Mandarin. From the reports of secondary schools inspected by OFSTED for 717W 2001–02, it is noted that four schools taught Mandarin as part of the curriculum, four taught Mandarin as an extra-curriculum subject and three other schools taught Chinese as part of the curriculum.