CILT has submitted a detailed response to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education’s Inquiry into the E-Bac. The key points and recommendations we have made are as follows:

• We support the intention of the E-Bac to refocus attention on subjects such as languages which have seen significant declines in the numbers of pupils taking them to the end of compulsory secondary education. We believe that this will provide an incentive for schools to give languages a higher profile within the curriculum and that it will help to close the gap between the best and the worst performing schools which will be of particular benefit to pupils attending schools with higher levels of disadvantage and lower educational attainment.
• We strongly support the inclusion of a language among the subjects that will make up the E-Bac and provide evidence to show how successful language learning brings profound intellectual and cultural benefits to pupils. Learning a language is a crucial part of the preparation of young people who will be competing for jobs and representing British interests in the global economy.
• We raise concern that the E-Bac could lead to languages being seen as a subject which is only of relevance as an ‘academic’ subject for the more able, and argue for the inclusion within the E-Bac of other types of accreditation in addition to GCSE, providing evidence that this can be equally rigorous.
• We also make the case for improvements to the way languages are assessed at GCSE. 
• We stress the need for high quality continuing professional development for teachers of languages if the benefits of the E Bac are to be realised.
• We refer to practice in other countries where considerably more curriculum time allocated to the subject, and pupils begin to study languages in primary school and continue until at least 16.

We have sought permission from the Education Select Committee to publish our evidence in full.