Cambridge drops language entry requirement

The University of Cambridge is proposing to drop the need for a GCSE foreign language as part of its admissions criteria to attract more children from state schools.

Cambridge said today that it is the only university that still insists on a core of subjects students must have studied if they want to apply for a place at one of its colleges, which includes a GCSE level A to C in a foreign language.

But from next September Cambridge wants to scrap the system and leave it up to individual departments to specify the subjects and qualifications required as part of their admissions process.

One of the key reasons behind changing the need for core subjects was the decision by the government to remove compulsory learning of a foreign language from the national curriculum after the age of 14.

The change in the curriculum has been significant, according to the university. In 2000 80% of all school students - from both the private and state schools - took a foreign language at GCSE, but that has now fallen to below 50% overall. The number of state schools where students are required to study a foreign language after 14 is now around 17%, the university said.

Geoff Parks, director of admissions for the Cambridge Colleges, said: "This change would remove something which has, unfortunately, become a significant barrier impeding access to Cambridge."

He added: "We would still encourage all young people to learn a foreign language."

Dr Anne Davidson Lund, director of policy research, research and information at CILT, the National Centre for Languages, said: "This is only one university - all the other universities have taken out the requirement of a modern language (as a condition of admission) some time since. Cambridge was the last one.

"This is just a tiny element, along with all the other challenges that we face in trying to encourage young people to take up languages." She said there was a continuing trend of modern languages only being studied by pupils in the independent sector or at grammar schools after the age of 14, and it was creating a culture of "elitism in languages".

The University of Oxford confirmed it dropped the compulsory requirement for undergraduates to have a modern language at GCSE after its 1993 prospectus.

Until then it had been a condition of "matriculation" - the point of enrolment - for every undergraduate to have the qualification, a spokeswoman said.

She said: "It wasn't found to be a useful requirement and was just another administrative hoop that needed to be done. Originally I think it was introduced to show that the student had had a rounded education."

The decision by Cambridge comes two years after University College London (UCL) announced it was changing its admissions criteria to make a modern foreign language a compulsory condition of admission in 2012.

A spokesman for UCL said the new policy was an attempt by the university to protect the teaching of modern languages in schools since the government decided to drop it as a compulsory subject at GCSE.

He said: "The thinking behind the decision by our academic committee was that UCL is very big on global citizenship and its international dimension is very important. We are also a university which has lead the way in the language teaching - we offer 22 languages at undergraduate level including Dutch and Icelandic.

"It was considered to be a way of underlining that commitment at a time when we were worrying about the decline in the teaching of modern languages."

The university is confident that demanding a modern language as a condition of entry will not impact on its widening participation agenda especially at it has given advanced warning to schools and students that the requirement was being introduced.

If students do not have a GCSE in a foreign language they will have to make a commitment to learn a language alongside, or as part of, their degree.

The Cambridge proposal comes five years after the government decided in 2002 that pupils no longer had to study a modern foreign language at GCSE.

However, last year the government backed recommendations from the Dearing report that from 2010 every seven-year-old in England would have to study a modern language as part of the national curriculum until the age of 14.

According to latest official figures since languages became optional for 14-year-olds the proportion of pupils taking a GCSE in a modern language has fallen from 80% to 50%, and 40 secondary schools did not offer a single pupil for GCSE in 2007.