'Will Brits ever bother with language learning?'

Do you have regrets from your school days?

I’m sure the answer is 'yes, of course'. What it may not be is 'oui, bien sûr', 'ja, natürlich' or 'sí, ciertamente', because despite a new survey from the British Council revealing that more than half of us in the UK regret losing languages learnt during our school days, the same study highlights that most of us have seen those skills vanish within just one year of finishing education.

So what’s the issue? With so many of us wishing that we’d not forgotten our ‘bonjours’ and ‘muy biens’, why are we not doing everything in our power to keep and improve those skills when we finish school?

Is it time to admit that, as a nation, we just cannot be bothered with language learning?

Sadly, 'can’t', 'won’t' and 'don’t', continue to be three words that tend to sum up our national view when it comes to speaking foreign languages.

There still seems to be a feeling that ‘everyone speaks English anyway’ – even though they don’t - and regretfully languages continue to lose out at school.

This year’s GCSE figures saw the number of French exams fall by 6.2 per cent compared with 2014, with a 9.8 per cent drop in German.

The number of Spanish exams – the language which had previously managed to avoid waning interest from students - also declined in the past year, falling 2.4 per cent.

What’s more, the number of students opting to study a language at A-level has fallen by almost a third in the past two decades. So with the A-level languages crisis continuing across the board it seems that if nothing changes then the next generation will end up having the same regrets when it comes to language learning as the current one.

So with that in mind, where do we go from here?

Interestingly, despite the huge number of us losing our language skills in such a short space of time, Brits do seem to recognise the personal benefits of speaking a foreign language.

Among those surveyed for the British Council, 72 per cent recognise language skills as something that help your CV standout from the crowd, whilst 77 per cent believe that language skills give you greater employment opportunities.

Employers agree - the most recent CBI/Pearson Education and Skills Survey shows that almost two-thirds of UK businesses need foreign language skills – something likely to only increase as businesses look to enter and trade in new markets.

And as a British Council report highlighted in 2013, language learning is vital for the UK’s future prosperity and global standing as well as essential for our trade, prosperity, cultural exports, diplomacy and national security.

In fact, providing people across the UK with experiences of other cultures and languages lies at the heart of the British Council’s work and it has to be said that an outward-looking perspective has never been more important for the UK’s place in the world.

It seems then what we need to do is to make sure that more people understand the real value of languages – after all, the evidence is there but what we’re still missing is the buy-in.

This won’t be easy or a quick fix unfortunately, it will require a combined and concerted effort to get more of our young people taking on languages, similar to what we have seen in relation to STEM subjects in recent years.

As with STEM, it takes time but it is achievable. And the good news (yes, there is some) is that now is actually a great time to start learning languages with lots of positive policy changes across the UK, such as all children now being taught a language in primary schools in England and Wales.

But what we shouldn’t forget is that it’s also the responsibility of us all to do more – teachers, parents, Government and pupils themselves to truly appreciate the value of language learning.

Let’s face it, there are lots can all do when it comes to taking on a language so rather than ‘je regrette beaucoup’ when it comes to languages, let’s do our utmost to turn the tables and make it ‘je ne regrette rien’.

Mark Herbert, head of schools programmes at the British Council