As Chair of the University Council For Languages (UCFL), which represents the views of Departments and Schools of languages in higher education across the UK, and as Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds, I very much welcomed the 2025 Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) report by Megan Bowler, sponsored by Duolingo, that underscored the urgent need for action to support and improve the uptake of languages at school level and beyond.
The report emphasised the numerous advantages of acquiring language skills and fostering a linguistic mindset: enhanced critical thinking, better communication, increased creativity, and improved intercultural understanding and empathy. It draws on insights from UCFL studies illustrating the vital role of collaboration between universities and schools, while stressing the necessity for more productive partnerships with policymakers and stakeholders.
Among the recommendations made in the report, UCFL particularly endorsed the idea of targeting government funding to support languages in higher education, with the goals of preventing the loss of strategic languages and tackling regional ‘cold spots’.
Perhaps most concerning, alongside the loss of national capacity in language and intercultural awareness skills that are essential for the UK’s growth, are the barriers to opportunity and choice that the increasing ‘cold spots’ in regional language provision at HE level present for local students.
A 2023 article by Becky Muradás-Taylor and Philip Taylor found large cold spots in the North, East and South West of England for universities offering languages at below average entry tariff. Muradás-Taylor is Chair of the Widening Participation Languages Network (WPLN), a Special Interest Group of UCFL, which convenes WP Universities to enable a broad overview of their language provision, avoiding the opening up of such cold spots.
As the authors outline, this is a social justice issue. The much-publicised closure and threatened closure of languages at the Universities of Leicester and Nottingham respectively, alongside earlier closures at Nottingham Trent and De Montfort, could leave students in the East Midlands with little or no opportunity to study languages and cultures to degree level.
In 2025, the British Academy undertook an exercise in mapping cold spots for Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences disciplines more broadly, based on Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data. Among their recommendations were greater regulation of disciplinary provision in Higher Education, and the need for providers to seek ways to collaborate while remaining within Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) law.
The rapidly diminishing provision of language skills in this country is not due to a lack of interest, as the enthusiasm around learning on Duolingo and other platforms clearly shows. However we now need national oversight and coordination to avoid further attrition across the whole pipeline. As British Academy fellow for languages, Professor Charles Forsdick puts it in a Times Higher Education article from April, “the issue is the system, not the subject. Leaving decisions about what is taught and researched in our universities solely to market forces risks narrowing provision in ways that do not reflect national needs.”
UCFL particularly endorsed the idea of targeting government funding to support languages in higher education, with the goals of preventing the loss of strategic languages and tackling regional ‘cold spots’.
Whilst formal language learning in schools and universities has been in decline for the last twenty years at least, and the THE article cited above underlined the dangers of the rapidly accelerating loss of critical mass in staffing at HE level in languages (17% down on 2015-16 levels), there have recently been some encouraging signs that the numerous initiatives to champion languages are gaining traction. Not least among these is the excellent Languages Movement, launched by the DfE through the National Consortium for Languages Education (NCLE), to coordinate action across a range of educational levels and stakeholders.
Meanwhile, university linguists are working hard to refresh language degrees and make them even more relevant to today’s students and employers, demonstrating the links with the UK’s economic growth, security, and prosperity, and liaising with UCFL, the British Academy, the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS), and the government through the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Modern Languages (APPG ML), and the Cross-Government Languages Group (XGLG).
At the same time, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has consistently reinforced efforts to reverse the decline and improve public understanding of the import and impact of research in languages and cultures with schemes such as the 2016-20 Open World Research Initiative (OWRI) or the 2022 Future of Languages Research fellows. These were followed last year by the launch of their 2025-26 Focal Awards scheme.
UCFL supports the calls for increased collaboration inter- and intra-sector, and for national oversight, including the development of a National Languages Strategy. We already sponsor partnerships with schools through initiatives such as Routes into Languages, and the Reach Foundation’s innovative Languages For All project. As firm believers in the power of concerted collective action, we remain optimistic about the future for languages at all levels in the UK.
