A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

1.6.1 The Situation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland

The state of foreign language teaching in English primary schools in the early
1990s was reminiscent of that referred to in the Plowden Report, 'sporadic',
'individual' and 'unco-ordinated'. The randomness of the situation in the early
1990s and the potential inherent 'traps’ of such random experiences was
discussed by Poole (1995). 'Modern Foreign Languages in Primary Schools'
(CILT, March 1995) is CILTs attempt to summarise the situation in the mid
1990s in maintained primary schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The CILT report is based on a survey carried out in August 1994 by means of
a questionnaire sent to Language Advisers in 125 Local Education Authorities
(LEAs) with a response rate of 42%. As CILT reported, it became very difficult
to arrive at a clear picture of the current situation 'as the questionnaire was
addressed to LEAs rather than individual schools'. One might, however,
question the 'wisdom' of sending questionnaires to LEAs rather than to schools
when, under Local Management of Schools (LMS), any decision on foreign
language teaching provision quite clearly lies within the schools themselves.
As only less than half of the Local Education Authorities responded, the
questionnaires only provide a 'snapshot' of the overall situation rather than
specific details (ClLT, 1995: 3). The following sections will present a brief
summary of the report's main findings under the headings of 'overall provision',
'languages taught', 'starting age', 'nature of provison', 'patterns of provison and
amount Ofteaching time', 'staffing and staff training' and 'transfer to secondary
school'.

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