Do we have anything to look forward to in Secondary Languages in 2026?

Sara Davidson – Associate Consultant for Secondary Languages

As a secondary languages teacher in 2025 it has been difficult not to become downhearted. The number of pupils taking GCSEs and especially A-levels in our subject are dropping year on year and reports of severe or inconsistent marking in public examinations abound. With increasing financial pressure in schools, in both the state and independent sectors, senior leadership teams have become more reluctant to run courses for smaller cohorts, especially in departments that struggle to get access to the top grades, German is being cut at every turn, and many schools are running departments offering just one language. On top of this teacher recruitment has become so difficult as the pool of higher quality candidates has shrunk, to compound this, the DfE reduced the ITT bursary for secondary languages to £20,000 this year and has tightened it requirements around offering subject knowledge enhancement courses. Languages teachers are being asked more regularly to teach languages that they do not have a particular expertise in (and therefore less enthusiasm for). The recent news of Nottingham University, a university known for its outstanding languages teaching, planning to close down its language department, felt like another stab through the heart, and was quickly followed by Leicester University announcing it was thinking of following suit.

Despite all of this, I do believe that there are sparks of hope out there on the horizon for 2026…

The language teaching community is made of tough stuff and the outcry over the university closures was difficult to ignore. We have shown that we will not just ‘roll over’ and organisations such as The University Council for Languages (UCFL), the Association for Language Learning (ALL), the British Council and the Independent Schools’ Modern Languages Association (ISMLA) are certainly fighting the good fight. Let’s hope that the petitions and the input of influential voices in the sector makes decision-makers stand up and listen. Ofqual published a report on the 15^th December saying that it had fined Pearson £2 million for some serious breaches including one case that involved languages: there were multiple issues in recent years with how questions were set and scripts marked in the Pearson Edexcel A-level in Chinese. Teachers and others had raised concerns, underlining the importance of teachers highlighting such issues and that we are listened to.

Regarding the number of applications for modern languages teacher training, we saw an increase in 2024/2025 to 2,933 applicants, of whom 1,187 were offered and accepted places from 2,369 and 1,004  respectively. This represents an increase of approximately 24% in applications and 18% in acceptances. Hopefully this trend will increase, or at least remain stable, this academic year. Applications are promising in the first couple of months of this year and have certainly been coming into the National Modern Languages SCITT for which my school acts as a Hub.

Maybe I am just imagining it, but role-models speaking languages seem to be on the increase… King Charles speaking German at the welcome banquet for the visit of Bundespräsident Steinmeier was all over TikTok, the new Head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, who has been in the news recently is a fluent Arabic speaker and has A-level Russian – two languages that seem to be on the rise in the popularity stakes in my school at the moment. There are many celebrities who are proud linguists and we should be promoting this more in schools: Celebrities You Didn’t Know Are Bilingual or Multilingual – Business Insider

Perhaps the biggest and best news, however, has been that the UK is to rejoin the ERASMUS scheme (see: UK set to rejoin EU’s flagship Erasmus student exchange programme) This means that young people will once again have the opportunity to study, work, train, volunteer or even develop careers in sports coaching abroad, without all of the red tape we have been experiencing since Brexit. Schools should also be able to facilitate internships or volunteers from France, Spain and Germany to enrich the work of our language departments. As linguists we do not need to be convinced of the linguistic and cultural benefits of the scheme, but maybe it will also help to build some bridges with the EU and benefit us politically and economically. There are so many schemes available within ERASMUS + that can inspire and benefit our pupils and teachers in schools, by exchanging ideas and improving linguistic competency.

So, I do feel that there are positives out there, but we all need to do our bit. As well as the return of ERASMUS + there are so many universities and organisations with schemes and projects set up to inspire the next generation of linguists. It is up to us to make use of them, to keep fighting the fight to keep language learning high up in every school’s agenda and to promote teaching as a career within our schools.