The GCSE may be a domestic qualification but it operates in what is becoming an international market for labour. Before the results for this year had even been published, David Frost, of the British Chamber of Commerce, had predicted that those who leave school in the years to come will have to compete with the likes of the many skilled Polish craftsman who have come to this country in recent years, a group whom he said his members were recruiting “in vast numbers”.

This demand is not solely related to the specific talents that such individuals can offer. It reflects that they have achieved a reasonable command of English, are literate and numerate and have an admirable appetite for work. Those who are not destined for entry into higher education, in particular, have to be able to match this critical level of core skills if they are to compete in the jobs market with well educated and highly motivated immigrants.

Hidden among yesterday’s results is the strong probability - based on last year’s showing - that six out of ten pupils failed to achieve five passes at grades A to C in English, maths and a science. It is disturbing, therefore, that the numbers undertaking GCSEs in French and German have tumbled yet again - as they have ever since the Government decided in 2004 that it should no longer be compulsory for a language to be followed until the age of 16. This is compounded by the reality that languages are not being abandoned by independent schools, grammar schools or the very best comprehensives, but across the mainstream state sector. It is a reflection on how dire this situation has become that the best the teaching unions could suggest is that marking in these subjects should be made more charitable to candidates, coupled with the accusation that employers were to blame for this slide because the advertisements they place in newspapers do not emphasise the importance of applicants having some proficiency for languages.

Both of these assertions are ludicrous. The position clung to by ministers is not much better. It is that improving language provision and adding an element of compulsion (but not that robust an element) in primary schools will, in time, reverse the fall in those opting out of languages as teenagers. An improvement in primary school languages would indeed be valuable. But not as an alternative to French, Spanish or German being sat at the age of 16. It should underpin a return to compulsion.

It is not as if it is impossible to change course. A fresh focus on maths and related disciplines in the past few years has prompted the number of pupils sitting these at GCSE to increase again this year. Concern about the declining quality of science at GCSE has produced a switch away from combined science and back to individual GCSEs in biology, chemistry and physics.

In the earlier part of this decade it seemed as if the achievement gap between boys and girls at GCSE could only widen indefinitely, but a new emphasis on boys has been a catalyst for a welcome improvement in their showing. If ministers were determined to demonstrate that languages are important by ensuring that they are genuinely compulsory (not one or two token lessons a week) from the age of 7 to 16, they could make progress. If they cannot be bothered, then why should GCSE students be?