In my last post, I wrote that I would give you a summary of what Robert Sakhrani found out from his interviews with teachers in the four schools studied. I asked ChatGPT to do a bullet point summary for me of the relevant extract from the PhD. As a reminder the PhD thesis can be found here if you want to follow it up further. Recall that tht etitle of the PhD thesis is: Exploring the decline in uptake of modern foreign languages at GCSE in England through Positoning Theory: reflecting on the perspectives of pupils and teachers in secondary schools.
See whether the findings accord your own thinking. I imagine perceptions will vary enormously depending on your school and background experience. In a third post I'll explore what practical steps departments and schools might take to encourage positive attitudes and uptake.
Here is what teachers aid (via ChatGPT):
Teachers frequently felt that MFL had been progressively deprioritised within the school curriculum, particularly since languages ceased to be compulsory at KS4 in 2004.
They believed that insufficient curriculum time reduced the status of languages and forced them to rush through content, leaving too little time for developing important speaking and listening skills.
Teachers expressed a strong sense of reduced professional autonomy. Government policy, curriculum prescription, GCSE reform and management decisions were seen as limiting their freedom to teach creatively and responsively.
They tended to see themselves as creative, flexible and committed professionals, taking considerable satisfaction from incremental improvements in pupils’ language proficiency.
Many regarded MFL as fundamentally different from other subjects, since teachers must simultaneously develop vocabulary, grammar and four language skills.
Relations with senior leadership emerged as an important source of frustration. Timetabling, setting, curriculum time and restrictions on pupils’ choice of languages were seen as obstacles to increasing uptake.
Teachers sometimes described themselves as having to “fight”, “battle” or “struggle” to maintain the position of MFL within their schools. This language revealed considerable emotional investment, frustration and, at times, stress.
GCSE reform and assessment were major concerns. Teachers believed that languages were perceived by pupils as difficult and harshly graded, making them less attractive GCSE options.
The organisation of speaking and listening examinations was regarded as an additional difficulty, and pupils’ anxiety about oral assessment was thought to discourage some from continuing with languages.
Teachers believed that greater stability in national MFL policy would benefit both teaching and pupil motivation. Frequent changes were seen as disruptive and sometimes poorly conceived.
Government accountability measures such as EBacc and Progress 8 could create tensions because school leaders worried that comparatively low MFL grades might negatively affect overall school performance.
Teachers frequently characterised some pupils as inward-looking or culturally insular, with limited experience of multilingual environments.
They saw parental and community attitudes as important influences. Parents with little experience of languages could reinforce the idea that MFL was irrelevant, particularly where pupils expected to follow parents into occupations requiring no languages.
Conversely, positive parental language experiences, international travel and multilingual role models were thought to increase pupils’ motivation to continue studying languages.
Teachers believed pupils needed more opportunities to experience languages outside the classroom, particularly through foreign trips and exchanges, so that languages became something tangible rather than merely another school subject.
The global dominance of English was regarded as a significant demotivator: pupils could reasonably feel that they could travel and communicate without learning another language.
Some teachers associated pupils’ attitudes with cultural stereotypes and occasional xenophobia, sometimes attributing these to parental or community influences. However, they made only limited direct connections between Brexit-related attitudes and declining pupil motivation.
A more concrete concern about Brexit was its effect on recruiting well-qualified EU language teachers and therefore potentially losing native-speaker expertise from departments.
Teachers identified weak primary-to-secondary transition as another important problem. Pupils could arrive at secondary school without the proficiency or confidence teachers believed earlier language learning should have provided.
Covid disruption was also considered damaging, particularly to pupils’ confidence and speaking ability.
Importantly, concerns about the status of languages were not confined to state schools. Even the independent-school teacher reported pressure from parents to prioritise STEM subjects because of their perceived greater economic value.
The interviews therefore suggest that teachers see declining MFL uptake as resulting from an interaction of systemic, institutional and social factors, rather than primarily from what happens inside individual language lessons.
At the same time, the positioning analysis reveals a strong professional identity: teachers tend to portray themselves as committed advocates for language learning working against constraints largely beyond their control.
One particularly interesting comparison with the pupil interviews is that both sets of interviews point towards the importance of the home environment and pupils’ ability to imagine languages as relevant to their lives. The teacher interviews, however, place much greater emphasis on curriculum status, assessment, timetabling, school leadership and national policy as explanations for declining uptake.
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