JULIETTE CLARO, LECTURER IN EDUCATION, ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY, TWICKENHAM, UK
CHARLOTTE RYLAND, QUEEN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD; STEPHEN SPENDER TRUST, UK
The pipeline of linguists at higher education is drying up fast. Despite a slight increase in 2025 (Collen and Duff, 2025), languages entries at A-level and higher education remain low (British Academy, 2024). The announced closures of the languages programmes at Cardiff (Ayres-Bennett et al., 2025) and Aberdeen universities reflect a national crisis in developing future linguists. Arguably, there are many reasons why students choose not to carry on with languages after GCSE, from the perceptions that languages are too hard, elitist or lacking in careers opportunities, to losing students to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects or to boredom (Bauckham, 2016). As languages teachers across the country continue to battle with their senior leadership teams to keep their A-level classes running, this article explo
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