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Read the latest blogs from The Languages Gateway and its supporting organisations below.

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3 October 2025: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) brokering engagement between languages researchers and policymakers through funding and impact

It is a perennial challenge to present research on languages to government. UKRI is leading on bridging this gap between researchers and policymakers.

By James Fenner (AHRC) and Claudia Viggiano (ESRC), for UKRI.

How do you showcase and promote languages and linguistics research to policymakers?

How do you as a national higher education funding body – UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – support the research community in engaging with policy? How do you get researchers to pitch their project findings in a meaningful way that speaks to policy?

At the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – two of the nine organisations that form UKRI – we are responding to these questions and making the case that academic engagement has a role to play in building intelligent relationships between academia and policy professionals.

For us, researcher engagement with policy comes in three distinct areas: brokering relationships, brokering through impact and brokering through funding opportunities/training.

Brokering relationships

The cross-Government Languages Group (XGLG) is a gathering of civil servants representing as many government departments as possible, seeking to understand better language policy issues across different departmental responsibilities and better coordinate approaches to language policy.

The Academic Engagement sub-group of the XGLG supports the development and maintenance of intelligent and valued relationships between government and academia, so that government makes more effective use of languages expertise, and the languages research community contributes to the creation of evidence-based government policies. It provides a forum in which members can update each other, share ideas and best practice, and collaborate on specific activities including but not limited to coherent communications, networking and events.

To this group, we bring knowledge of our funded research projects and relevant researchers to the conversations and suggest linkages with activity in individual departments. We also provide feedback, with our understanding of our research community, on strategic thinking and other initiatives posed by members of the group. We also engage with other funders, such as the British Academy, and can work collectively with them to highlight the relevance and importance of languages research.

Brokering through impact

While brokering relationships is important, engagement through meetings is not always possible. Providing policymakers with brief, punchy stories is an alternative way to showcase the impactful work of research and its application to policy. For example, in collaboration with DHSC, a knowledge exchange workshop was convened in July 2024 to discuss language-related research and its overlap with public health and national health priorities.

To gather evidence for it, 100–200-word impact stories were drafted on research projects that explored the use of languages in public health settings/contexts. In collaboration with Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett, we selected ten projects (funded by AHRC and ESRC but also other funders) that encapsulated languages and public health: from public health messaging for Hassidic Yiddish communities during Covid-19; through to championing the benefits of bilingualism for children with autism. We approached the original project leads and ensured the story drafts accurately represented their projects – capturing key information, initial outputs/benefits and longer-term impacts.

These impact stories were shared in advance of the event and were very well received by DHSC and all attendees. They have since been referred to, as part of ongoing cross-government working group and sub-group discussions. They have proven to be a pithy/punchy medium to pitch research impacts to policymakers, in turn giving researchers insights into what policymakers are looking out for.

Similarly, ESRC has been tracking the progress of recent investments to identify and showcase their impact stories, which are then disseminated on the UKRI website: ESRC research outcomes and impact – UKRI. New impact stories are published regularly and circulated to relevant stakeholders.

Brokering through funding opportunities and training

We also support our community through policy-orientated funding opportunities. Our flagship scheme is the UKRI Policy Fellowships. It provides the opportunity to bring academic expertise to bear on pressing policy challenges and support the career development of academics in the process. Embedding some of the UK’s brightest researchers into the heart of government, fellows help inform and shape effective public policy and its implementation.

Leading on the scheme, on behalf of UKRI, ESRC has previously funded fellowships in several government departments including BEIS (prior to the current departments DBT, DESNZ and DSIT), CBO, DCMS, Defra, DfE and DfT.

AHRC has been part of the scheme for several years with arts and humanities researchers being embedded in placements in DCMS, DLUCH, FCDO, and Welsh Government (see 2023 round). However, we are keen to contribute more to this scheme championing languages through fellowship placements with other government departments in the future: an opportunity that the newly opened 2025 round can provide.

For mid-career researchers, we also provide an opportunity within Parliament, through ESRC’s Parliamentary Thematic Research Leads Scheme. Based on the concept of Chief Scientific Advisers, Thematic Research Leads (TRLs) bring their impartial expertise, extensive policy knowledge and strong network of research connections to a variety of teams in Parliament. The purpose of the TRL role is to facilitate and enhance the use of research evidence and expertise in Parliament (in both the House of Commons and House of Lords) through effective knowledge exchange, collaboration and processes. Launched in 2024, the second cohort is underway with eight TRL researchers active until 2026.

In addition to these, we also offer training to researchers via a funded three-day training course through our Engaging with Government Programme, in partnership with the Institute for Government. Its aim is to help researchers understand the policymaking process and apply it to their research. It also enables links to be forged between policymakers and new arts and humanities research. Like the Policy Fellowships above, it is open to all AHRC’s/UKRI’s remit including languages.

We also support policy engagement at a studentship level, where there is a UKRI policy internship scheme which enables UKRI-funded doctoral students to undertake a three-month placement at one of a selected group of influential policy organisations (the scheme supporting on average 125 internships per year).

It is through funding/training schemes like these that mutual benefits can be realised: reciprocal outputs and impacts generated as well as knowledge exchange.

Enormous opportunities

Through these three brokering channels, we have been able to explore the possible ways in which languages research can contribute to and influence policy. AHRC and ESRC (as part of UKRI) are committed to supporting languages and linguistics research and how it can align to societal challenges and government priorities. The potential opportunities for continued collaboration are enormous.

1 October 2025: Returning to the ‘Languages Crisis’

Megan Bowler, author of HEPI's new report The Languages Crisis: Arresting decline published this summer, reflects on what has changed since she first authored a report on this subject for HEPI five years ago.

By Megan Bowler, DPhil student in Classics at the University of Oxford and Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Oriel College and the Faculty of Classics.

5 years ago, as an undergraduate intern, I wrote a report for the Higher Education Policy Institute (‘A Languages Crisis?’), and in 2025, HEPI’s Director Nick Hillman suggested that it was time for another piece to provide an update. Though I am now rather busy with doctoral research, I jumped at the chance to return to languages policy! I had already been reflecting on this topic again at the end of 2024, when I read the news that the Latin Excellence Programme (modelled on the Mandarin Excellence Programme) had been scrapped. As a classicist, it was disappointing to hear that a project which sought to improve access to Latin was no longer a priority. This seemed to represent a bigger picture across both ancient and modern languages: the perception of languages as ‘elitist’ is at risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I was keen that Classics and MFL should be working together to combat this.

What has happened since 2020?

For this second report, I wanted to focus on developments since 2020 – I had intended to write a brief policy note, but I found that there was plenty to say, and a lot of new research to highlight. While news stories continued to emphasise the low participation in language-learning (notably the decline of French and German in schools), I was conscious of responses along the lines of: ‘So what? The rest of the world speaks English!’, and ‘ChatGPT can translate for us!’. I wanted to make the case specifically for why language-learning is more relevant, not less relevant, in the age of AI.

I drew on my experience of learning languages and teaching ancient Greek to identify 13 reasons why a ‘linguistic mindset’ equips us for this age of technological change. These include close and critical analysis, cultural adaptability, creative problem-solving, precision and clarity of expression, and empathy towards new perspectives. The ‘linguistic mindset’, an expression I liked when reading about the Queen’s College Translation Exchange project, appealed to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, you can access these benefits from engaging and participating, not just from reaching perfect fluency in one language (a point articulated well in John Worne’s piece: ‘Time to Embrace Our Imperfection?’). It also celebrates the value and transferability of all kinds of language-learning: ancient and modern, students’ existing multilingualism, signed languages, and the UK’s own linguistic heritage (e.g. Welsh and Gaelic).

New challenges

But it’s clear that we need not only a new public idea about languages, but investment and intervention. Revisiting the issue 5 years on and speaking with colleagues and teachers, I was struck by how difficult teacher recruitment has now become. This is further harming languages in schools, as well as worsening disparities between independent and state schools. While I was writing, Cardiff University was planning to cut its modern languages and translation programmes: Cardiff being the largest provider of MFL degrees in Wales, and responsible for a brilliant mentoring scheme across 80% of secondary schools. While the full devastation was averted, we can in no way be complacent: the position of these subjects is far from secure, and we should be troubled too by the closures that have now affected the majority of post-1992 institutions. This made it clear to me that it’s not enough simply to ask HEIs not to close programmes and departments that are struggling with demand – we need national oversight to protect high-level linguistic expertise, particularly for strategically important subjects, and investment to co-ordinate and sustain the outreach and mentoring schemes our sector contributes.

Pressures on participation in schools and universities

Another focus of my research was to compile data on participation in languages in schools and HE, from the JCQ and HESA. The graphs present a rather bleak picture of the low participation in languages, especially relative to other subjects; insights from the Languages Trends surveys shed further light on the fact that our ‘languages crisis’ is characterised especially by unequal opportunity. I still maintain that additional qualification pathways or recognition frameworks would facilitate participation beyond these qualifications: for instance, those suited to heritage learners, and the British Academy’s suggestion of a post-16 vocational certificate. Turning to the pressures facing languages degree programmes in HE and institution-wide language provision, the UCFL, AULC and CUCD’s reports provided useful insights; keeping track of how languages departments and centres are faring in HE is important. Once again, and particularly after conversations I had with policymakers in other countries, I recognised that being able to share statistics is paramount for gaining traction. Finding ways of collecting and sharing more quantitative evidence (about the state of languages in HE, the insights of teachers, the perceptions and motivations of students, the success of outreach initiatives, and the benefits of language study) really matters.

Urgency, not hopelessness

Previously in A Languages Crisis?, I suggested that the issues we face are long-term and systemic, rather than a sudden ‘crisis’. Nonetheless, the ‘crisis’ label has stuck, and we might think of its ancient Greek origins as a decisive moment or turning point. It is a reminder of urgency, but not hopelessness. Let us hope, then, that the momentum we are seeing for languages at the moment – and indeed the Languages Gateway, which will provide a useful point of coordination and for making connections between policy and practice – will keep a spotlight on languages and help us to generate change for the better.

The Higher Education Policy Institute’s new report, The Languages Crisis: Arresting decline by Megan Bowler (HEPI Report 192) is available here.

References

Bowler, M. (2020). A languages crisis? London: HEPI.

Worne, J. (2025). ‘The UK's Languages Crisis: Time to Embrace Our Imperfection?’ Languages, Society & Policy. Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge.

29 September 2025: Boosting the status of languages

What can we do - from government to us all as individuals - to boost the status, visibility and support available for languages?

By Anna Lise Gordon, member of the ALL ITET* forum, Co-President of ALL

*ITET: Initial Teacher Education and Training

Given the well-documented benefits on the Languages Gateway of being able to communicate in other languages, it is surprising (perhaps even shocking) that there is a constant need to boost the status of languages in the UK. This is perhaps even more unexpected, when we know from the Language Trends 2025 report that more than 200 languages are spoken in primary schools in England. Why is this linguistic diversity not translating into a wider passion for languages?

The challenge is clear, as noted in ‘Towards a national languages strategy: education and skills’ (2020):

‘We need urgent, concerted and coordinated action to address the critical situation for languages in the UK’ (page 6)

and

‘a system-wide approach is needed because each part of the system is dependent on the others’ (page 8)

So, let’s consider just two suggestions to boost the status of languages for some of the key players. You will be able to add your own ideas. Our combined efforts would make a tangible difference. We all have a part to play – no excuses!

Government / DfE

Ensure a coherent and well-resourced policy for languages as a springboard for practice, including support for recruitment of international trainee teachers and school trips abroad.
Explore incentives for promoting languages e.g. through a subsidised Foreign Language Assistant for every school, support for school trips abroad.

Local communities

The recent ‘City of Languages’ initiatives across the UK (Sheffield, Portsmouth, Newcastle, London etc.) are a cause for celebration, showcasing the joy of languages in our communities. All are welcome to get involved!
Engage with local activities (e.g. European Day of Languages on 26th September, International Mother Languages Day on 21st February) that promote linguistic diversity and cultural understanding, emphasise benefits of language skills, and enjoy the social connections.

Examination boards

Provide an examination syllabus that is engaging and relevant to young people.
Ensure fair grading for languages, so that learners are not disadvantaged in comparison to their other subjects.

Universities

Enhance the university learning journey for students with well-resourced opportunities to learn a language, including ab initio. Many young people realise the importance of languages after they have left school!
Consider ways of supporting young people with language learning e.g. Cardiff University mentor scheme, accessible and affordable online and residential language courses.

School leaders

School leaders are pivotal in ensuring that languages are valued and supported, for example celebrating pupils’ work in languages in assemblies, school newsletters, encouraging languages in GCSE option choices, hosting trainee teachers of languages on placement etc.
Ensure a coherent approach to promoting languages with governors, parents, careers staff, local employers, books in other languages in the school library, multilingual signs around building etc.

Teachers

Collaborate with teachers across the school who speak other languages, and can promote the benefits of learning languages in their subjects e.g. Learning a language makes you better at mathematics.
Effective teaching is essential, and language teachers deserve ongoing professional development throughout their careers, including membership of the Association for Language Learning. As ASCL’s Suzanne O’Farrell noted in a blog for the Association for School and College Leaders (2024): ‘language teachers offer much more than just knowledge; they impart the lifelong skill of how to learn a language’. Language teachers are special!

Employers

Connect with local schools, colleges and universities to promote the importance of languages at Careers Fairs, provide language ambassadors for schools etc.
Host students on work experience, providing meaningful opportunities to use languages in the workplace.

Family and Friends

Share your love of languages at every opportunity, including pride in any non-English home languages. According to a recent article in The Spectator, about a quarter of teenagers have an immigrant mother and many will speak other languages at home – wonderful!
Lots of young people enjoy learning apps like Duolingo and, even without technology, everyone can help learners by testing vocabulary and celebrating achievements!

Individuals

Match the time you spend on other hobbies (and social media) with learning a language. You’ll be amazed at how much progress you make!
Embrace the challenge of learning a language and be proud of what you CAN do, not what you can’t. Yes, it takes time and commitment, but it can soon become one of your superpowers!

Of course, we recognise that ‘change in education is easy to propose, hard to implement, and even harder to sustain’ (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006:1), but there is no excuse for not trying. English may well be a dominant language in the world, but our world is truly multilingual, so let’s #TalkUpLanguages at every opportunity!

References:

ASCL, British Academy, British Council, UKRI, Universities UK, 2020, Towards a national language strategy. British Academy, London.

Collen, I and Duff, J, 2025, Language Trends England 2025. British Council, London.

Hargreaves, A and Fink, D, 2006, Sustainable leadership. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Nucette, A, Hamamura, T, Leitao, S and Biedermann, B, 2025, ‘Can learning a new language make you better at maths? A meta-analysis of foreign language learning and numeracy skills during early adolescence’, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 28(4), pp. 923–953.

O’Farrell, S, 2024, Boosting language learning: Strategies for education leaders. ASCL.

Government departments regularly publish identified research priorities - but linguists struggle to break through to this process. Here's what can be done about it.

By Prof Wendy Ayres-Bennett, University of Cambridge

25 September 2025: Languages and the government’s Areas of Research Interest (ARIs)

If you are a university researcher in languages, how do you get your research-informed evidence to the right people in government?

For scientists, there are a number of well-established channels available, including the network of Chief Scientific Advisers and the numerous scientific advisory committees and councils. None of this currently exists for linguists, which is one of the reasons why the Cross-Government Group for Languages (XGLG) has set up a sub-group for academic engagement to help promote and facilitate intelligent use of research by government in the very broad field of language(s) research.

Over the past year or so, I and other members of this group have been thinking about one of the prime resources used by scientists to identify government research priorities, the Areas of Research Interest (ARIs), published periodically by the different government departments. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many linguists are unaware of the existence of ARIs, although happily this is beginning to change.

Disappointing search results

One of the difficulties is that a search on the GO-Science/ESRC’s database of ARIs using the term ‘language’ or ‘languages’ yields relatively few results that will resonate with most researchers in Modern Languages units. A search on ‘language(s)’ throws up a promising 35 results, but 25 of these can be immediately more or less discounted, because they pick up the same repeated phrase ‘natural language processing’ in the background information given by DSIT about their technology strategy. Two of the remaining ten results also use the phrase ‘natural language processing’ and two others the expression ‘(large) language models’; whilst this work is of key importance, it speaks more to computer scientists and computational linguists than the main body of researchers in Modern Languages.

That leaves just six results. Two of these concern trade, for instance:

How can we codify and measure the impact of non-regulatory barriers to trade, such as exchange rates, language, cultural, and geographical barriers? (Department for International Trade 2020)

Two relate to early years support, for example:

What are the characteristics of additional needs for children in the early years, with specific consideration of neurodiversity, speech and language, and mental health interventions?

One asks about interventions to combat teacher shortage in a range of subjects, including Modern Languages, and the final one relates to language usage in pre-sentence reports.

I have elaborated all this at some length, because very few of these results will speak to the majority of researchers in Modern Languages, who may work in literature, culture and film, medical humanities, environmental humanities, or linguistics, to mention just a very few of the relevant subdisciplines.

Is this because they are not doing relevant research? Far from it.

A recent piece of work demonstrated the relevance of languages research to the government’s missions. For example, if we think about ‘Take back our streets’: in 2023 UK Police Forces made over 400,000 bookings for interpreters in around 160 different languages to capture statements relating to communication between police and limited-/non-English speakers. Linguists can offer invaluable advice about how best to do this. To cite another example relating to this mission: messaging, including online, to communities in their own language, for instance during riots or protests, in culturally sensitive terms is crucial. This underlines an important point about languages research: it is not just the linguistic skills that linguists bring to the table. More importantly, because of these linguistic skills they have deep cultural insights which are vital when communicating with, or understanding, speakers of other languages.

Regarding kickstarting economic growth, languages obviously have a key role to play in international trade enhancement, supporting growth of UK business, and driving forward tourism and hospitality. And there are many more areas where language research could usefully inform policy-making. Some of this research relates to the lived experience of individuals. To cite two examples: from a close reading of a range of texts in German, one researcher gained new insights into anorexia in boys which were then translated into guidance for healthcare professionals, whilst another researcher explored the trauma experienced by Ukrainian refugees when, newly arrived in the UK, they are offered a Russian-speaking interpreter.

Whether we think of social and community cohesion, health and well-being, diplomacy, defence and security, or international development, to name just a few key areas, researchers in language(s) have important things to say. While some of this will be presented as quantitative data – the bedrock of research-informed evidence –, as my example above has shown, other evidence provided by linguists will be qualitative, relating to individuals’ lived experience. The two types of data nicely complement each other: while quantitative data offers information about what is happening, qualitative data, relating to lived experiences, tells you why and for whom.

What can be done?

More specific and clearer wordings in the ARIs as to how they might relate to languages would be invaluable to researchers when they design – or better co-create – research projects in light of government priorities. Very often only a minor tweak is required – such as the insertion of ‘language’ when elaborating a range of factors which might be relevant to a particular issue, as in my first example from the DIT (now merged with BEIS to form the Department of Business and Trade). And the benefits for civil servants are obvious: more targeted and relevant research from an academic community which is keen to engage!

15 September 2025: Supporting international students training to teach languages in the UK

ALL (the Association for Language Learning) hosted its annual ITET (Initial Teacher Education and Training) seminar in July. Here is a summary of reflections from the discussion.

Collated by Steven Fawkes, ALL Co-President

Why we value our international trainee teachers

The teaching and learning community in the UK gains from increased diversity in the trainee teacher cohort. For example, our pupils benefit from:

Exposure to different cultures and ways of thinking
Another outlook and different perspectives on education, culture, languages etc.
A broader world view
A range of experience and expertise from international educational institutions
Linguistic role models for our young people

We embrace the rich variety in languages, as they are spoken all over the world, including variants of French, German or Spanish accent, vocabulary etc. International trainee teachers broaden the range of linguistic and cultural repertoires in our classrooms.

We welcome opportunities to learn from each other, share ideas, and expand our horizons. Many international trainee teachers have a wealth of experiences – personal, professional and vocational – and are committed to teaching in Britain for the longer term.

International trainee teachers bring the world into the languages classroom - embodying what language learning can do in terms of opening doors. They offer cultural enrichment through the variety of cultures they bring to life in classrooms through age-appropriate examples.

International trainee teachers represent diversity in our multilingual schools enabling our pupils to recognise themselves in their teachers. We see ‘people like us’ in our diverse school populations.

Recruitment of international trainees supports the UK's ability to teach and study languages in the school curriculum.

What issues do international trainee teachers encounter...

...in the wider context?

Lack of political coherence, and contradictory messaging between DfE and Home Office on recruitment and retention processes, can be a problem. Some of the bureaucracy is challenging, confusing and costly. Some international trainee teachers also cite a lack of support from their ITT (initial teacher trainin) provider, schools and the government in navigating these processes.

The UK can send mixed messages to our trainee teachers, who are recruited overseas with the implication that they are desperately needed, then finding it difficult to find a job, secure affordable accommodation, afford transport to school placements, obtain a skilled worker visa etc.

How can ITT providers and lead stakeholders support international trainee teachers when work visas are difficult to secure?

There is ongoing discussion among stakeholders, led by ITT colleagues and across ALL network, and engaging the All Party Parliamentary Group for Modern Languages in Westminster.
We continue to raise the issues with different audiences, including close collaboration between ALL and other associations, including UCET.
Provide up-to-date information for MATs and schools on how to understand and offer skilled worker visas for trainee teachers seeking ECT employment.

How can ITT providers and schools support international trainee teachers with difficult financial transition into the host country?

Where possible, provide accommodation near provider’s site at affordable price.
Support, where possible, by allocating placement schools within affordable distance of living area or support with transportation where possible.
Information on the cost of living, accommodation, and transport to be communicated before arrival.
Information on affordable accommodation, groceries, more affordable shops in local areas, food vouchers.

...within the establishment?

Trainees need support to understand and acclimatise to the education systems England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (which are all different) i.e. a pre-ITE course induction programme is needed. Such provision enhances understanding of concepts such as SEND, pastoral care, safeguarding, professional behaviours and curriculum priorities; as well as broader cultural and societal norms.

Some issues raised by international trainee teachers include:

Colleagues in schools are not always culturally aware or appropriately responsive
Culture shock of British children’s / teenagers’ attitudes contrasting with trainees’ own / previous experience
Cultural expectations of classrooms
Possible micro-aggression and racism experiences on school placement.

How can we support trainees and early career teachers?

Continuing to raise the issues to different audiences including schools and policymakers.
Supporting their arrival with pre-course materials on the education system in the host country to easy transition.
Continuing to train school-based teachers, mentors and leaders on culturally responsive mentoring and coaching skills.
Offering opportunities for regular dialogue on cultural differences between international trainees and mentors or staff to address misunderstandings.
Providing links to information for international trainees.
Information on local faith communities.
Community events: multifaith events, charity fundraising, community food events.

Further support and information is available...

From ALL for international trainees and ECTs:

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/student/becoming-a-language-teacher/

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/ect-years/

From the Reading Centre of Excellence for Overseas Teachers:

An organisation committed to helping International Qualified Teachers and international students find a clear path to teaching in the UK.

https://www.reading.ac.uk/education/partnerships/overseas-teachers

From St Mary’s University Twickenham international trainee teacher support programme:

https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/partnerships/itt-school-experience-handbook/during-school-experience/supporting-trainees-during-school-experience/international-trainees.aspx

Professional discussion at the ALL: Initial Teacher Education and Training (ITET) forum

https://www.all-languages.org.uk/about/community/special-interest-groups/itet-sig/

International Trainee Teacher Education Special Interest Group

Click here to join the group. The mission of this group, supported by UCET, is to:

Provide a research-led forum for ITE providers to support the education of international trainee teachers in readiness for becoming Early Career Teachers
Support the development of a joined-up response to the Department for Education for coherence in policies and practices between the government recruitment policies of international trainee teachers and ITE providers.
Add to the field of knowledge about supporting international pre- service and early career teachers navigating their transition in the English education system in order to maximise their retention by providing support and guidance to schools and academies in retention strategies of international Early Careers Teachers.
The specific objectives of the group are:
To collate and disseminate information about current research, and practitioner best practice to support the integration of international trainee teachers and ECTs
To explore the main challenges international trainees face and opportunities to mitigate those challenges during training and during induction
To make recommendations to UCET and therein the Department for Education for the recruitment and retention of international trainee teachers and Early Careers Teachers in our education system.
To create document guidance for ITE providers to best support international trainee teachers.

Other useful links:

Department for Education advice for overseas trained teachers: Apply for qualified teacher status in England - How some overseas trained teachers can apply for qualified teacher status (QTS), using the apply for QTS in England service.

TES article: Teacher recruitment: the challenges for international trainees

10 September 2025: A new Coalition for Language Education?

The Curriculum & Assessment Review is sparking debate about the place of languages in our education system and prompting new conversations - and coalitions - to take place.

By Prof Ben Rampton, Kings College London

There is a very general feeling that in England, education 5-19 needs to change, and in July 2024, the new Labour government set up a Curriculum & Assessment Review. The Review sets out ‘to refresh the curriculum to ensure it is cutting edge, fit for purpose and meeting the needs of children and young people to support their future life and work’ and it accepts the need to take ‘the issues and diversities of our society’ on board. A lot of different language associations have now written to the Review Committee, and they recognise that this is all very relevant to language education too.

So for example, referring to modern languages, ALL endorses a ‘strategic commitment of a multilingual language policy’ but speaks of ‘the problem of pupils’ attitude towards language’ and ‘the lack of investment in… training of primary teachers for languages’. For English as an additional language at school, NALDIC calls for recognition of ‘the range of languages used in the daily lives of children and young people from a range of different backgrounds’, but among other things, criticises the ‘lack[.. of] any specific mention of EAL learners’ in the specifications for Initial Teacher Education. In 16-19 education, NATECLA stresses that the needs of ESOL learners ‘are often overlooked because they are so different from the large majority of school and college students’; for subject English, NATE notes that nowadays ‘cultural fluidity [is] as important as social mobility’ and that ‘young people [need] to discuss difference, divergence and conflict in terms other than those they may encounter in mainstream and social media’; on literacy, UKLA writes of the ‘urgent need… for a more culturally relevant curriculum’ ‘embracing the richness and diversity of our learners’; the British Academy suggests that the ‘commitment to a broad and balanced national curriculum on paper… does not reflect the languages education many young people receive up and down the country’; and many of these and other submissions stress the need to attend much more closely to home, heritage and community languages.

Modern languages. EAL. ESOL 16-19. Subject English. Literacy education. HHCLs.

Yes, there are some differences in the particular priorities that these submissions emphasise, but overall, they have a great deal in common (and you can see much more of this in our detailed overview of the submissions from 19 different organisations/associations). So let’s hope that the Review and then the DFE respond positively to the very high level of consensus that they evidence. But do we just leave it at that? Go back into our separate boxes and wait to see whether or not government moves towards the broadly shared vision of language development and linguistic diversity that has now emerged so clearly?

Our new Coalition for Language Education believes that that’d be a mistake, and that this is an important moment for de-siloed thinking. We want to press further with the question: Is there actually more that unites English, EAL, EAP, ESOL, modern, classical and community languages than divides them? Central government matters a great deal, but policy is never just a decision taken at the top that then flows smoothly down a ‘delivery system’. On the contrary, there are lots of ‘policy actors’ at different levels – schools, teachers, students, local communities, local governments, universities, and teacher associations themselves – and it is likely to need a lot of cross-sectoral conversation if we are going to figure out what a broader and more integrated vision might mean for classrooms, for the curriculum, and for the ways in which language education is divided up and organised.

A new Coalition

To help build these conversations, we formed the Coalition in autumn 2023, and came up with six guiding tenets and tasks. You can see our Founding Statement here, and the principles are (very briefly):

Recognise the richness of language in our lives
Accept linguistic diversity
Engage with social and cultural change
Respect the complexity of classrooms
Build partnerships
Draw on universities.

Following on from these, we said we’d aim to ‘Identify collective problems’, ‘Take action on policy’, ‘Reinvigorate models of language for education’, ‘Engage with linguistic stratification & diversity’, ‘Probe traditional boundaries’ and ‘Support language teachers & professionals, enriching teacher education’. A lot of groups and individuals have signed up to this statement, and we have been pursuing this mission with a website, at on-line and in-person events and conferences, in working papers, in academic and professional journals, and indeed in work focused on the DfE’s Curriculum & Assessment Review.

But really? Aren’t there already a number of organisations supporting a re-think across different fields of language education policy – the British Academy, for example, or the Committee on Linguistics in Education? Aren’t the existing language associations themselves internally diverse? Isn’t the landscape of language education already well-populated with a lot of very active and very effective bodies?

‘Yes’ is the answer to all three questions.

Even so, we’ve been finding that at the events, presentations and collaborative tasks we’ve organised, the interaction between people in different branches of language education generates a lot of positive energy and a strengthened sense of possibility. For as long as this is happening, the Coalition’s got value. The six tenets give it overall purpose, and feed into our main activity: learning from each other what ‘Recognising the richness of language in our lives’, or ‘Build partnerships’, can mean in different parts of language education. We’ve no five-year plan, and if and when this kind of energising cross-sectoral dialogue beds down in other places, the Coalition can disperse. But that’s not yet.

Find out more

You can find out more about what we’ve been doing at www.coalitionforlanguageducationuk.com, and we’ve an article in a special issue of the Language Learning Journal on language policy. For spring 2026, we’re working on a conference about cities and regions as sites for connection, and here is the place to go if you’d like to join us. We very much hope you’ll do so.

1 September 2025: Careers & Languages

All professionals benefit from an ability to communicate in a second language, and many roles require it.

By John Worne, CEO, Chartered Institute of Linguists

Language skills are valuable in the workplace.

Languages skills are professionally valuable. Whether you have a limited but functional ability to communicate in another language or have deep linguistic and cultural knowledge and have high level language skills - it always helps and can be transformational.

Language graduates and people with bilingual and multilingual skills have access to a much broader range of career opportunities than the traditional paths of teaching, tutoring, translation, and interpreting alone. While these classic roles for linguists remain great options, they have evolved also with technology - for instance, teaching and tutoring are now widely enabled by digital delivery and online platforms, while translators work on everything from legal and medical documents to subtitling and video games. The worlds of business, the professions and government also offer numerous additional opportunities to use language skills.

In the business sector, language skills can be particularly valuable in marketing, sales, and customer facing roles. Marketing professionals can use their linguistic and cultural knowledge to adapt campaigns and brand messages for international markets, while sales teams leverage language skills to build relationships with international clients. Customer facing roles enable more effective communication with international customers, sometimes working across multiple time zones and cultural contexts.

Technical and operational roles also frequently require language expertise. Export coordinators manage cross-border shipments, credit controllers handle international payments and many international businesses small and large need languages to access markets and manage customs, tax and compliance requirements. These roles often combine language skills with specific industry knowledge and bring career resilience by combining two strengths.

Languages are also vital in the Armed Forces, security and intelligence services and in many frontline public services. UK Government departments are major employers of linguists and UK public services rely on language skills – not least Public Service Interpreters who support the police, courts, health services and local government in meeting the needs of the UK’s diverse language communities.

Conferences, event management, sports, music, museums and roles in cultural institutions similarly benefit from multilingual capabilities, particularly when organising international events, touring or coordinating with overseas partners.

Languages are an excellent skill for specialist careers in the sport and leisure industries. A lot of people from other countries play in major sports teams. The football industry is vast: and top players in UK teams from other countries and cultures may require medical, legal, financial or personal advice and support. Many will prefer to receive this in their own language. People who are bilingual or multilingual with Home, Heritage and Community languages are well placed to use the languages they have learnt in childhood in a variety of careers.

Success in developing a career which uses your languages often depends on maintaining and improving language skills alongside developing job, sector or industry-specific expertise. Many professionals find that their career paths evolve as they gain experience, often leading to roles or opportunities, which their languages facilitate, which they hadn't initially considered. The key is to keep using your languages and being open to different opportunities while building a foundation of practical career experience and proactively using your language skills whenever possible.

Across Europe more than half of all professionals use more than one language at work every day. It is common for many people - from apprentice roles through to senior executive positions - to be able to function comfortably in more than one language.

The numbers of people using their languages in the UK are fewer. But by embracing the many languages and linguists in our midst, the world of work in the UK can be more multilingual; and by more of us using our languages in our work, we can boost our careers, enrich our working lives and support the UK economy as a whole.