Could you design a worse system for making sure people don't study languages?

 If you wanted to design a system for making sure as few people as possible learn a language, our school system is perfect:

• "Transition" from KS2 to KS3 where pupils either start all over again in the language they have been studying, or abandon it and start another language.

• Cowardly tinkering with performance measures supposedly to support take up at KS4, while the biggest headline performance measures insidiously disincentivise schools from promoting languages.

• Unfair grading at GCSE, where lower grades are given out in languages. This leads to a bogus narrative that either teaching isn't good enough in languages, or as a nation our pupils are not good enough.

• No mainstream options for continuing to study a language in college 16-18. Just a bizarre niche A Level that is barely suitable even for the tiny minority that do take it. Meanwhile, our young people are avid users of apps such as Duolingo. But in the education system, they are unable to continue with language learning.

• Universities offering degree courses to a minority of the minority who took A Level. Cold spots emerging where courses are no longer offered. Universities offering language courses to students of other disciplines. But who have had a 2 year hiatus post GCSE, or potentially since Year 9.

I have heard Professor Charles Forsdick of the British Academy and Cambridge University refer to the system as a series of "cliff edges". After Year 6, at Year 9 options, and after Year 11 there are built in car crashes where numbers fall off a cliff. But the carnage is not driven by the numbers. It's no accident. The road heads straight for the cliff. Transition. Unfair grading. No mainstream post 16 options. Language learning isn't in jeopardy because not enough people are continuing. It's the other way round. There are reasons why people don't continue. In fact it's a miracle anyone survives through to a degree in languages at all.

What can we do about this? I will examine how we can challenge this system in another post. But meanwhile one thing is for certain: this is not about the quality or nature of teaching and learning. One look at the broken system tells you that we are not going to solve this by claiming that this or that aspect of language teaching will motivate pupils more. Teachers make each section of the system work as well as it can work. What we need to do is challenge the systemic issues that make the learning a dead-end for the vast majority.