Language Ambassadors project

Languages Ambassadors: Universities working together to promote languages in schools

A university education in modern languages is becoming harder to access, as departments and programmes reduce provision across the UK. The effect falls hardest on disadvantaged applicants, who are more likely to apply to lower-entry-tariff courses, which have borne the brunt of the cuts; and more likely to be restricted to studying at their local university, so where a regional cold spot has opened up, the option of studying languages at degree level disappears altogether.

A major cause of this is the longstanding decline in the uptake of languages in schools, especially in the state sector and in disadvantaged areas. Universities have significant potential to reverse this. Sending trained student ambassadors — especially undergraduates — into schools, in person and online, is one of the most effective ways to show pupils what languages can offer and to encourage them to keep studying them.

One difficulty is that universities' own outreach capacity has often reduced alongside their departments, and schools in cold spots have no local university-based languages provision to draw on. Working together would allow universities to do far more than they can alone, and extend their geographical reach, but that potential has not yet been realised.

The Languages Ambassadors project sets out to realise this potential.

The project will:

• Bring together universities that want to start or improve a languages ambassador scheme
• Facilitate collaborations between them, so they can pool their efforts and target them where they are most needed — cold spots and disadvantaged pupils
• Provide training in how to set up and run an effective scheme
• Offer a toolkit of curated resources for ambassadors to use, so that no institution has to reinvent the wheel
• Publish that toolkit openly on The Languages Gateway website
• Help universities match their ambassador offer to demand from schools: locally for in-person visits, nationally for virtual ones

The project will also create a simple route for schools on The Languages Gateway portal: a single place to click if you would like a languages ambassador to visit.

Much of the groundwork is already done, thanks to volunteers from across the UK working through Gateway working groups — including a draft toolkit and a survey that has identified a substantial number of interested institutions. The next phase depends on securing funding for a research assistant to take the work forward.

Languages Ambassadors is a project of The Languages Gateway.

Are you at a UK university and interested in taking part? Please get in touch.