Summer 2013 - The Independent Schools' Modern Language ...

What does your MP think about the importance
of languages and language learning?
Speak To The Future, the campaign for languages, has taken on the task of
contacting all 650 MPs and challenging them to spell out their views on languages
and language learning. The more views collected, the more UK policy
-makers will be forced into taking languages seriously, thus ensuring that
educational and economic policy reflects the ever-changing demands of the
global workplace. If our young people are to compete on this stage and enjoy
the opportunities offered therein, language learning must be at the heart
of education at all levels.
If you share our views and can help us by contacting your MP, please get in
touch at www.speaktothefuture.org where you will be able to access an ‘MP
finder’ and sample letters. An example letter from Mike Rauh and responses
from Chris Kelly MP and Elizabeth Truss, Parliamentary Under Secretary of
State for Education and Childcare are included below for inspiration. A teaching
pack will also be available after the summer half term with resources to
encourage pupils to get in touch with their MP too. Replies make a good article
for school magazines… Working together, we will be well on our way to
contacting all 650 MPs. Join us now and speak up for the future of languages!
Nick Mair
Example letter to an MP:
Dear Mr Kelly,
My name is Mike Rauh. I live in your constituency and have taught Modern
Foreign Languages for 29 years. Eleven years ago I was appointed as an Advanced
Skills Teacher (AST) for Primary Modern Foreign Languages (PMFL)
and successfully led Sandwell Education’s agenda (as part of the then national
programme) to introduce PMFL into over 94% of the primary schools
there. I was one of 40 so-called National Trainers who trained primary practitioners,
head teachers and primary school improvement advisers, and was a
member of the DCSF (now the DfE) Steering Group for the Longitudinal
Study “Language Learning at Key Stage Two” (Research Report DCSF-
RR198 Final Report January 2010).
Because of a cut in funding by your Government, my Academy could no
longer afford to keep me on as an AST and I was made redundant in Summer
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