A drive to get children learning languages in primary school has been undermined by the scrapping of compulsory languages at GCSE, researchers have found.

The findings of the first major study into the impact of language lessons in primary schools, suggest that teachers are spending huge amounts of time and resources trying to get teenagers to carry on learning a modern language beyond 14.

The government introduced modern language classes in primary schools in 2002 and aims to make them compulsory by 2011. It wants to increase the number of people studying languages once they leave school.

But the initiative is being hampered by the simultaneous withdrawal of the requirement for all GCSE candidates to take a foreign language in 2003, researchers at the University of Cambridge found.

Official figures show that between 1998 and 2008 GCSE exam entry numbers for languages fell by just under half from 75 per cent to 44 per cent.

Almost half, (46 per cent) of language heads in the survey of 1,600 schools, said there were “negative effects” of the decision to drop the GCSE language requirement. Pupils had “disaffection” for languages by the time they came to choose exam options and a perception that language exams are particularly difficult also put them off, the two year study found.

Sue Kirkhum, education policy specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said youngsters would lose out in the job market to their European counterparts if they don’t have another language. By dropping the requirement for a GCSE language the government is reinforcing the perception that languages do not matter, she said. “The message they are giving to young people is the science is important but that a modern language isn’t important.”

The primary languages initiative has been championed by successive Education ministers as a key policy in the drive to raise standards in language learning in schools.

But government commissioned research into its impact indicated that secondary schools “were not drawing on pupils’ prior experience” of language learning. There were also vast differences between the standards reached by pupils in languages at the end of primary school.

“The perception of the majority of secondary teachers and headteachers was that there was a lack of consistency at present in foreign language provision in primary school,” researchers said.

Introducing modern language classes for primary school children has also failed to improve their awareness of other cultures, they added, with only 12 per cent of teachers saying they taught about different lifestyles in other countries in class.

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