Language teaching has got even smaller as GCU axes courses

Towards the end of 2023, language teaching in Scotland became a big news story.

The German Ambassador had raised concerns with then FM Humza Yousaf about the decline in the teaching of his nation’s language, warning of the “dramatically low” uptake numbers. As I explained at the time, his concerns were well founded, but part of a wider issue.

Soon after, representatives from France, Germany, Spain and Italy were writing to the University of Aberdeen urging them not to cut modern language courses as they had planned.

Those proposals – which involved ending full language degrees – prompted a massive response: protests were planned, European officials spoke out, and The Herald ran a number of articles arguing against the idea, like this one by David Leask, and this one by Len Pennie. In the end, the university decided it would only offer joint-degrees in languages, but it’s worth keeping in mind that low uptake (amidst broader financial pressures) had been what sparked all of this.

Today, I can exclusively reveal that another institution is planning cuts to language teaching – this time, Glasgow Caledonian University.

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I first heard about this from a teacher whose students, some of whom had hoped to study at GCU, had been told that courses would not be available in future.

This particular university doesn’t offer specific language degrees like those available at Aberdeen – instead, languages are optional modules available on, for example, some business courses.

But there didn’t seem to be any official information confirming that this was going to change, so I got in touch with the university to ask what was going on.

At that point, they could easily have hidden behind Freedom of Information rules – as I’m sure some others would have done – and told me to make a request that they might answer properly within 20 working days. To their credit, that is not what happened.

Instead, I was given the following statement:

Due to a substantial decline in demand, language provision at the University is changing, starting from this academic year. This trend reflects wider shifts across the higher education sector in the UK.

 

After a comprehensive review of our language programmes, we have therefore decided to largely phase out the teaching of optional language modules from our programmes from 2024/25.

 

Exceptions to this are our Business Management programme which will offer language options for new entrants in 2024 only and they will have these options throughout their study to 2029, and our International Business with Languages programme, which will be discontinued for new entrants from 2025 but will run from 2024 to 2029 and offer French, German, Spanish and Italian.

 

While our historic level of language provision is no longer financially sustainable, we remain fully committed to supporting the current cohort of students, ensuring they can complete their studies as planned.

 

This has been a difficult decision, but it will allow us to concentrate our resources where they will have the most impact while maintaining high academic standards across all of our offerings.

So yes, it’s true: Glasgow Caledonian University plans to stop teaching languages.

The Business Management programme will get a one year reprieve but no new students will be able to study languages as part of their course from 2025. In 2029, when existing students complete their courses, it seems that all language teaching will come to an end.

In an increasingly competitive and interconnected world, fewer Scottish students will have the opportunity to study a language as part of their degree. I don’t think anyone would try to spin that as a good thing. Many will argue that something should be done to ensure that this decision can be reversed, and they won’t get much argument from me.

It would be easy at this point to just be outraged, and I’m sure I could have hoovered up plenty of clicks by going down that road, but there’s more going on here, and we need a much more direct and honest conversation about it.

There are definitely issues at school level, because the numbers of young people studying languages to exam level has been dropping for years, and that obviously has an impact on the numbers that might go on to study them either for, or as part of, an undergraduate degree.

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It’s also the case that the current financial settlement for universities is making it difficult or impossible to protect courses with very low enrolment numbers, hence the reference to language teaching being “no longer financially sustainable”.

But it feels like more than that, doesn’t it?

This isn’t just about school structures and pedagogy, or financial constraints; it is also the consequence of something cultural that desperately needs to be confronted.

Does Scotland really value languages? Does it even recognise the advantages that come with multilingualism?

It’s hard to argue that the answer to either question should be yes.