ANATIONAL review was launched last year to see what could be done to encourage 14 to 16-year-olds to study more foreign languages.

It followed a backlash against a Government decision to allow students to stop learning languages at the age of 14.

Academics in England and Wales expressed alarm at the slump in the number of pupils taking GCSEs in French, Spanish and German. They were concerned that we were seeing a crisis in languages in schools.

In the face of the report, published before Christmas, Liberal Democrat education spokesman Sarah Teather joined the criticism, saying: "Students on the continent are becoming fluent in three or four languages. Britain cannot hope to be competitive in the world if the next generation of school children are missing out on these vital skills.

"The Government needs to redouble its efforts to get specialist language teachers into schools to reignite the passion for these subjects."

She insisted pupils should start learning foreign languages in primary school and this should be backed up with proper funding and training for teachers.

In an interim report for the review, Lord Dearing said an "earlier the better" approach was important for languages, and proposed they should be embedded in the primary curriculum.

Lord Dearing said: "We want languages to come alive for pupils with an enhanced commitment to overseas visits, pupil exchanges, and the use of information technology to put pupils in touch."

And bringing languages to life is exactly what one Worcester school is trying to do.

Youngsters at Cranham Primary School have been preparing to get to grips with French, with some help from some older students.

To give youngsters a taster of language lessons, students from Elgar Technology College visited the school to teach a French lesson.

Amanda Richards, modern foreign languages co-ordinator at Cranham Primary, said 10 Year 7 pupils from Elgar had prepared a lesson on numbers for Year 3 children at the school.

"They came up with their own ideas for activities to run with Year 3 pupils," she said.

"We divided them into five different groups then they did a carousel, circulating around diferent activities."

She said activities had included a Twister game using different numbers, matching up cards, and conversation games - all designed to integrate French into the lessons.

She said they hoped to make it a rolling project to run through each year group, to make foreign languages prevalent in the school.

"The main language will be French here, but we will be incorporating other languages into that," she said.

"The children absolutely love it. I have to say the younger you get them the more keen they are, because they are less self-conscious.

"My hope in this school will be that we are doing some modern foreign languages across the curriculum and using it in other subjects such as PE - it's going to require a lot of learning but it's quite exciting really!"

Neil Morris, head of the city's only language college, Christopher Whitehead, said a recognition of the importance of languages was brilliant.

"It's just potty the way they allowed schools to drop languages and then they seem surprised that secondary schools have dropped languages," he said.

"They are suddenly trying to backtrack. It's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction."

He said the ability to speak a second language was becoming increasingly important in the world of work and it was only logical to introduce it at an early age.

"Of course it would be a great thing, you learn the nuance of a language," he added.

Mr Morris said part of their work as a language college saw Christopher Whitehead send members of staff to its five feeder primary schools to teach lessons regularly.

"They are timetabled there and work alongside staff at those schools, educating both staff and kids," he said.

"So it's already happening in Worcester."

THE REST OF EUROPE IS FORGING AHEAD

NEARLY all pupils in Europe study at least one foreign language as part of their compulsory education, the only exception being Ireland, where primary and secondary school children learn both Irish and English, but neither is considered a foreign language.

Pupils in upper secondary education learn at least two foreign languages in Belgium's Flemish community, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia.

On average in Europe, at the start of foreign language teaching, pupils have lessons for three to four hours a week.

In the UK, compulsory lessons in a foreign language normally start at the end of primary school or the start of secondary school.

In Luxembourg, Norway, Italy and Malta, the first foreign language starts at age six, and in Belgium's Flemish community at age 10.

About half of the EU's primary school pupils learn a foreign language.

In 2004 a British survey showed only one in 10 UK workers could speak a foreign language.

Less than five per cent could count to 20 in a second language.

80 per cent said they could work abroad anyway, because "everyone speaks English".

English is the language taught most often at lower secondary level in the EU, with 93 per cent of children learning it.

At upper secondary level, English is even more widely taught. French is taught at lower secondary level in all EU countries except Slovenia.

A total of 33 per cent of EU pupils learn French at lower secondary school level. At upper secondary level the figure drops slightly to 28 per cent.

German is taught in nearly all EU countries. A total of 13 per cent of pupils in the EU learn German in lower secondary education.