When Lord Dearing was asked last October urgently to review language teaching in English secondary schools, his core task was to assess the consequences of the Government’s decision, in force since September 2004, to allow pupils to drop foreign languages after the age of 14. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, was explicit: “If Lord Dearing says this strategy is wrong and we should go into reverse, we will listen to that advice and we will do that.”

On the evidence before him, it was Lord Dearing’s duty to convict. Across the state sector, language learning has not so much declined as been abandoned, with fewer than half of all pupils continuing even as far as GCSE or equivalent. Those teachers who have not taken early retirement have seen their careers wither. No one in their right mind would now seek a career in language teaching. To Labour’s shame, the policy is accentuating class and income divisions: the poorer the area, and the further north, the more monoglot the school is likely to be. Independent schools, by contrast, continue to compel pupils to persevere with languages as essential skills.

The case for reversing this disastrous policy forthwith, before secondary schools lose what is left of their language skills base, would seem unanswerable, and it is regrettable that Lord Dearing has not seized the moment. Instead, he has advanced a number of proposals designed to effect a “renaissance” in language teaching within two years. He does, however, recommend that the Government should announce now that unless the decline in takeup is reversed rapidly, languages will be returned to the statutory curriculum. That commitment should be made swiftly.

Lord Dearing’s reasoning appears to be that choice versus compulsion is not the main issue, and that successful formulation of a strategy for language teaching needs to ask why secondary school pupils head for the exit, given the chance. He implies that the battle to engage their minds and imaginations has been lost — and that this may be because the teaching of foreign languages not only offers too little, but starts too late.

A policy that looks only at language teaching after age 14 is thus, he argues, unlikely to succeed. The report’s enthusiasm for primary school language teaching is its strongest and most imaginative aspect. As Lord Dearing points out, primary school takeup of language teaching for four to seven-year-olds has soared in the past five years, rising to more than 70 per cent; and right across the range of ability and background, children are taking to languages like ducks to water. This no more than echoes the old truth: the younger you start with languages, the better. It would be sensible to start earlier still, at 5 or even in kindergarten, as the Dutch and other linguistically skilled nations do. Infant language teaching should not be seen as an optional extra.

Lord Dearing recommends that the primary school range of languages on offer should be widened, and language teaching integrated into the Key Stage 2 curriculum by 2010. It is an excellent idea; early acquaintance could do more than anything else to overcome teenage unease with foreign tongues. Once they know enough to explore further on computers, the world is potentially their oyster. The fact remains that few learn well what they do not “need”. Universities should restore languages as an admission criterion. More employers should demand language skills. But in the end, the Government will have to retreat. Languages belong on the curriculum.