Policy Briefings

Policy Briefing on Languages, Business, Trade and Innovation

Wendy Ayres-Bennett (PI MEITS) and Janice Carruthers (AHRC Leadership Fellow in Modern Languages) have published a Policy Briefing on Languages, Business, Trade and Innovation. In it they highlight key messages from these sectors around the importance of having high-level language and intercultural skills in the workforce and make a series of recommendations designed to support the development and embedding of these skills. The recommendations are the result of a Policy Workshop held in the House of Commons in January 2020, involving civil servants, leading businesses and business organisations, as well as academics.

You can read the Policy Briefing here

Policy Briefing – Modern Languages Educational Policy in the UK

The AHRC Modern Languages Leadership Fellow (Janice Carruthers) and the PI of the OWRI MEITS project (Wendy Ayres-Bennett) have published a Policy Briefing on Modern Languages Educational Policy in the UK.

This briefing is the result of a policy workshop with civil servants and academics held at Queen’s University Belfast in December 2018 and we are very grateful for the input of all those who took part. It sets out the key policy issues across the four jurisdictions of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and makes a series of recommendations for government at both primary and secondary levels.

Find the list of bibliographical references cited in the Policy Briefing by at the following link: References for Modern Languages Educational Policy Briefing 

This reference list was compiled by Leanne Henderson.

You can read the Policy Briefing here

Policy Briefing – Community Languages and Social Cohesion

In September 2018, alongside my colleague Professor Wendy Ayres Bennett from the MEITs project, we published a Policy Briefing on Community Languages and Social Cohesion. This follows a successful earlier workshop bringing together policy makers, civil servants and academics.

The briefing suggests effective policy support for community languages includes:

Incentivisation for mainstream schools to offer space to supplementary schools, either free of charge or at non-commercial rates.

Incentivisation for mainstream schools to embed activities that value Community Languages (e.g. workshops for parents, celebrations of linguistic diversity).

Incentivisation for mainstream schools to recognise and reward language skills obtained outside the school system and to facilitate entry for public examinations such as GCSE.

Incentivisation for teachers in the maintained sector to partner with those in supplementary schools and those providing ESOL to share best practice and have joint CPD opportunities.

Full and sustainable accreditation for lesser-taught languages at UCAS level.

A change in the census questions on language so that accurate data about Community Languages can be captured to help with policy-making.

You can  read the Policy Briefing here