Reports on language education

The following collection lists some reports and other material relevant to language education in the UK (and therefore to CLiE). It covers English as well as foreign languages (FL).

2026

2025

2025.11: Government response to the final report
2025.11: Final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review
2025.5: Linguistics could make language learning more relevant – and attractive – for school pupils. In The Conversation, by Jonathan Kasstan, Anna Havinga and Michelle Sheehan

2024

2024.9: Curriculum and Assessment Review launches call for evidence
2024.8: Subject choice trends in post-16 education in England. Investigating subject choice over the past 20 years. Report by British Academy on how A-level subjects have been combined since 2000. Humanities subjects, including both English (lang and lit) and Foreign Languages, have all declined individually, and students are less likely to choose all-humanities and more likely to choose all-STEM. Decline in English Lang or Lit is probably caused by new GCSE exams. Only 35% of centres offer Eng Lang at A-level.
2024.4: Phonics isn’t working – for children’s reading to improve, they need to learn to love stories. In The Conversation, by CLiE members Willem Hollmann, Cathy Wallace and Gee Macrory
2024.3: Telling the story: the English education subject report. Ofsted’s report on English teaching.
2024.1: Language Teaching in Schools (England) . Report for the House of Commons Library.
2024.1: Diverse tongues, unheard voices. Barriers to mainstream uptake of heritage languages in England. In BERA Research Intelligence, by Zara Fahim, Yuni Kim and Eva Eppler

2023

2023.10: “A, B, C, it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3” Towards new assessments for Numeracy, Literacy and Digital Fluency. (AQA) Announces plans for a new qualification.
2023.9: Bridging the gap between community and modern foreign languages attitudes and uptake amongst underrepresented students in schools: Linguistics as a tool for change? LAGB presentation by Zara Fahim
2023.6: English Studies Provision in UK Higher Education. (British Academy)
2023.6: Research in Languages, Cultures and Societies: Voices of Researchers in the UK
- Harrison, Katie & Nicola Mclelland. 2023. Research in Languages, Cultures and Societies: Voices of Researchers in the UK. Modern Languages Open 1–36.
2023.5: PIRLS 2021: National Report for England. Research report
2023.4: Submission on GCSE English Language (and Literature) by University English and the English Association
2023.3: New Language-hub schools and NCLE announced
- Official Government announcement
- Report in The Guardian
2023.2: Languages Provision in Further Education (British Academy)
2023.1: Studying SHAPE: 2022 A British Academy report on trends in GCSE and A-level entry figures 2012-2022 – A-level declines in MFL and English.

2022

2022.10: ‘Languages Learning in Higher Education: Granular Trends’ (British Academy and UCML)
- “There has been a significant decrease in language learning over the past decade amongst those studying undergraduate degrees solely focused on language”
2022.9: Language teaching in schools (England (House of Commons Library)
- A useful compilation of facts and figures.
2022.6: Submission on GCSE English Language (and Literature) by the Common English Forum.
2022: Official recruitment targets for new FL teachers.
- NB: In the previous two ITT [Initial Teacher Training] rounds, recruitment for modern languages was below target, so we have increased the 2022/23 target for modern languages to account for this previous under-recruitment. This is the first time we have made such an adjustment for the subject, leading to modern languages having the largest percentage increase in targets this year. … increasing by 635 trainees, from 1,505 to 2,140 (42.2% increase). [Comment: FL is the only subject area that received this treatment. The new target of over 2,000 new recruits for FL should be seen in the context of the current figures for UK graduates in FL opting for a career in teaching: about 175!]
- Schoolsweek reports that FL teacher recruitment produced only 34% of the targeted numbers in 2022-3 (726/2140), compared with just 69% in 2021-2.
2022.5: Research review series: English. Published by Ofsted. Reviews the research evidence for general principles for teaching spoken language, reading, writing and literature but ignores most UK research. Recommends explicit teaching about language.
- a downloadable .docx version
- highly critical reviews from the English and Media Centre and the English Association (in the TES)
2022.3: Report on a major Nuffield-funded research project on the effects of applying Englicious to the taching of writing in Key Stage 1.
- Also available on the Nuffield website
- Commentaries in the TES, a TES podcast, The Conversation, the Evening Standard, The Economist, ‘Grammarianism‘ (blog by Bas Aarts)
2022.2: Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers [of the Council of Europe] to member States on the importance of plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture (co-drafted by Terry Lamb)
- An explanatory memorandum expanding the recommendation.
2022.1: “Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers’ practices for teaching phonics and reading” by Dominic Wyse and Alice Bradbury
2022.1: Government response to the consultation on the Foreign Languages GCSE exam
- Further comments from other bodies

2021

2021.11: Second edition of a 2017 report by the Education Endowment Fund on improving literacy at KS2; it emphasises the need for explicit teaching of both vocabulary and morphology (producing ‘morphological awareness’).
2021.11: A debate in the House of Lords on teacher recruitment and training in which Baroness Coussins raised questions about the supply of new MFL teachers.
2021.10: Multilingual young people’s reading in 2021 (by Anne Teravainen-Goff, Christina Clark and Sabine Little (University of Sheffield))
2021.7: British Academy launches the Strategic Committee for Languages in Higher Education
2021.7: University Council for Modern Languages (UCML) report on trends in university modern languages admissions 2012-2018
2021.7: House of Lords Report on MFL
2021.6: Research Review: Languages. Published by Ofsted. Reviews the research evidence for general principles for teaching foreign languages.
- Highly critical special issue of The Language Learning Journal
2021. GCSE English Language: Time for Change (from Teaching English volume 27, published by NATE)

2021.4: Speak for Change. Final report and recommendations from the Oracy All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry. London: House of Commons.
2021.3: ESOL Learners and Functional Skills English. By Jenny Roden and Mary Osmaston (NATECLA)
2021.3: For consultation: Revised Subject Content specification for MFL at GCSE
- CLiE’s response
- A collection of background information and other responses

2020

2020.12: Report by the Institute of Physics recommending a national system for subject-specific CPD for teachers.
2020.12: Report signed by the British Academy and national academies from the USA, Canada and Australia on the lack of foreign-language skills in anglophone countries.
2020.9: Report published by the Institute of Welsh Affairs on a worrying drop in the number of trainee teachers in Wales who can teach in Welsh.
2020.9: Report by the Migration Advisory Committee recommending that teachers of foreign languages should be added to the shortage occupation list.
2020.8: Comment on 2020 A-level results by the British Academy, highlighting the continuing fall in languages, and especially a 40% drop in ‘other languages’ (mostly community languages).
2020.7: Towards a National Languages Strategy: Education and skills (British Academy with other bodies)
2020.5: The Nuffield Foundation reports the success of its Nuffield Early Language Interention (NELI), corroborated by EEF.
2020: Teacher labour market. Annual report 2020 (NFER)
2020.1: Language teaching in schools (England) (House of Commons Library)
2020.1: Boys studying modern foreign languages at GCSE in schools in England (Part 1. Schools that are beating the odds, by Bobbie Mills, Education Policy Institute; Part 2. What makes an odds-beating school? by Teresa Tinsley, Alcantara Communications)
2020.1: A Languages Crisis?A report (written by Megan Bowler, an undergraduate) published by the Higher Education Policy Institute.
- A lovely blog about the language crisis by John Claughton
- A reply blog by Megan Bowler advocating linguistics both at school and in HE.

2019

2019.11: House of Commons briefing paper on teacher recruitment and retention. (Deficit in MFL, surplus in English)
2019.11: The ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages) project on Developing language awareness in subject classes.
- A paper supporting this project.
- An annex with good practice.
2019.10: Education Endowment Fund: Integrating English.
- The project found that a teaching programme called “Language in Learning Across the Curriculum (LiLAC)” had no effect on EAL learners’ writing.
2019.8: Telegraph: Re top grades at A-level, Foreign Languages score very high but English Language scores very low.
- Contrast 2018: Inter-subject comparability …
2019.7: Education Endowment Fund: Improving literacy in secondary schools.
- The report recommends the explicit teaching of the special language of each subject – see our resources on subject language.
2019.5: The British Academy: Cognitive Benefits of Language Learning: Broadening our Perspectives, by Professor Bencie Woll FBA and Professor Li Wei FBA
2019.2: The British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society: Languages in the UK: a call for action.
2019: RIPL White Paper. Primary Languages Policy in England – The Way Forward (By Bernardette Holmes and Florence Myles; including a one-page summary)

2018

2017

2017. 9: The Royal Society and the Education Endowment Fund: Review of SES and Science Learning in Formal Educational Settings. (concludes that the main causal link between social class and attainment in science is via literacy)

2016

2016: PIRLS (Progress in Internatiomal Reading Literacy Study) Improved results in reading tests for Y5 pupils in England compared with other countries.
2016.12: Teaching Schools Council: Modern Languages Pedagogy (the Bauckham report).
2016: OECD: Building skills for all: a review of England. Policy insights from the survey of adult skills.
- England has more school-leavers without functional literacy than any other country in the study, and is the only country where school-leavers are no better than their grandparents.

2014

2014: The Welsh language in education in the UK (2nd Edition)
2014: The British Academy: Born Global: Implications for Higher Education by Bernardette Holmes

2013

2013: Teachers’ Standards. Guidance for school leaders, school staff and governing bodies (July 2011, introduction updated June 2013)
2013: The British Academy: Languages: The state of the nation.
2013: The British Academy and Cumberland Lodge: Multilingual Britain.
2013: Myhill, Debra, Susan Jones, Helen Lines & Annabel Watson. 2012. Re-Thinking Grammar: the Impact of Embedded Grammar Teaching on Students’ Writing and Students’ Metalinguistic Understanding. Research Papers in Education 27. 139–166.
- 2014:Torgerson, David, Carole Torgerson, Natasha Mitchell, Hannah Buckley, Hannah Ainsworth, Clare Heaps & Laura Jefferson. 2014. Grammar for Writing. Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. Education Endowment Fund.
- 2019: Tracey, Louise, Jan Boehnke, Louise Elliott, Kate Thorley, Sarah Ellison & Claudine Bowyer-Crane. 2019. Grammar for Writing. Evaluation report and executive summary. London: Education Endowment Foundation.

2012

2012: Lessons from abroad: International review of primary languages
2012: Moving English forward: action to raise standards in English (OFSTED report)

2011

2011: Report of the Inquiry into Overcoming the Barriers to Literacy. (All-party Parliamentary Group for Education)

2010

2010: The training of teachers. (House of Commons select committee report; #27: PGCE applicants with 2.1 or first-class degree in FL (43%) versus English (73%).

Before 2010

2009: The Rose review of primary education
2009: Review of modern foreign languages provision in higher education in England (the Worton report).
2007: The Languages Review (the Dearing report), by Ron Dearing and Lid King
2006: Research Review in Modern Languages, by Mike Kelly
2005: AHRC Report on the ring-fenced doctoral awards. [6 ring-fenced PhD awards for research on the linguistics of major European languages couldn’t be awarded for lack of applicants]
2005: The National Languages Strategy in Higher Education, by Hillary Footitt
2005: The KS2 Framework for Languages
2004: Writing Improvement Matrix (Key Stage 3 National Strategy)
2002: DfES: Languages for all: languages for life
2002: Grammar for Writing: Supporting pupils learning EAL (Key Stage 3 National Strategy)
2001: Year 7 Sentence level Bank (Key Stage 3 National Strategy)
2000: Languages: the next generation. (Final report and recommendations of the Nuffield Languages Inquiry)
1999: Improving literacy and numeracy. A fresh start (The Moser Report)
1997: The implementation of the National Literacy Strategy.
1994: Evaluation of the Implementation of English in the National Curriculum at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 (1991-1993) (The Warwick Evaluation)
1994: Report of the Commission of Inquiry into English. Balancing literature, language and media in the National Curriculum.
1990: A Survey of Language Awareness and Foreign Language Taster Courses. A Report by HM Inspectorate
1989: English for ages 5 to 16 (the Cox Report)
1988: Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of English Language (the Kingman Report)
1987: Modern foreign languages to 16
1984: English from 5 to 16. (HMI revised report; first draft 1982)
1977: Modern Languages in Comprehensive Schools
1975: A Language for Life (the Bullock report on the teaching of English).
1921: The Teaching of English in England (The Newbolt Report)
1918: Report of the committee appointed by the Prime Minister to enquire into the position of modern languages in the educational system of Great Britain (The Leathes Report).

For a longer historical timescale, there’s a massive, and possibly complete, historical collection of documents including reports on education.