To ask the Minister of Education (i) for her assessment of the amount of time children spend studying foreign languages during their time at school; (ii) to detail the accepted (a) educational; and (b) developmental benefits that are derived from studying foreign languages in school; and (iii) for her assessment of introducing modern languages into the Northern Ireland Curriculum Primary.

My Department does not gather information on the amount of time pupils spend studying foreign languages. However, the 2021 British Council’s Language Trends in Northern Ireland Survey indicated that approximately 80% of responding schools allocate 1-3 hours per week at Key Stage 3, for the teaching of languages. At Key Stage 4, the survey indicated that approximately 76% of responding schools allocate 2–3 hours per week to GCSE languages. Schools have the flexibility to design their curriculum to meet the needs of their pupils and the time allotted to modern languages will therefore vary from school to school.

Learning modern languages offer a wide range of educational cognitive as well as social and economic benefits and young learners have a particular capacity to learn a new language successfully. That is why modern languages are a compulsory element of the Key Stage 3 curriculum.

Whilst languages are not a compulsory element of the primary curriculum, many primary schools currently offer additional language opportunities. I have no plans at present to introduce modern languages as a compulsory element of the primary curriculum rather the focus of my Department is to build teacher confidence and capacity in this area. My Department provides earmarked funding of around £480,000 per annum to support the development of languages. This includes supporting the Confucius Institute Classroom Programme which provides Mandarin language lessons to around 20,000 pupils in primary and post-primary schools across Northern Ireland. In addition, my Department funds the Northern Ireland Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (NICILT) to promote languages to pupils and provide a range of professional development opportunities for modern language teachers.