Schools drop languages to move up tables

Schools are discouraging less able children from studying French and German in a bid to protect their league table rankings, new research shows.

Entries for the subjects have slumped alarmingly in recent years, especially in state schools.

Today a study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council casts light for the first time on how languages are trapped in a spiral of decline. So many pupils made their dislikeof them clear that the Government decided to make them optional from age 14.

But long before ministers acted, schools stopped entering pupils for the exams because teachers knew they would do badly and affect their school's place in the league tables.

Researchers looked at GCSE entries of more than 112,000 students in 1998. They found huge variat ions between schools in the proportions of pupils entered for certain subjects.

In French, some schools entered only 26 per cent of 16-year-olds while others put in 73 per cent. If they were middle class and expected to do well, pupils were more likely to be entered for French and German GCSE.

Pupils from less affluent families were more likely to do home economics and business studies at GCSE.

Professor Peter Davies, who led the ESRC research team, said irrespective of whether the school was a grammar or a "bog standard" comprehensive, teachers ruthlessly weeded out poor performers.

Schools were "cream-skimming" to ensure they got the highest grades. This was especially true in London, where parents pay even more attention-than elsewhere to league tables, Professor Davies added. "That clearly does match up with cream skimming," he said.

"There was a big incentive for language departments to do that - it makes their lives easier. League tables certainly do play their part in that."

The National Centre for Languages found that private schools insisted their pupils study at least one foreign language. But fewer than a third of state schools do the same.