The Economic Value to the UK of Speaking Other Languages
Ayres-Bennet, Wendy and Hafner, Marco and Dufresne, Elaine and Yerushalmi, Erez (2022) The Economic Value to the UK of Speaking Other Languages. Technical Report. RAND Corporation.
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
The UK has experienced a sharp decline overall in the uptake of languages since 2004, as evidenced by the falling number of entries for GCSE and A Level examinations in languages. At a time when the UK government seeks to reset its global economic relationships as part of its vision of 'Global Britain', such a decline is likely to have negative effects on the UK's ability to compete internationally,
This research assessed the economic value of languages to the UK in general and then evaluated the potential economic benefits to the UK of improving languages education in schools.
The study found that languages play a significant role in international trade and that not sharing a common language acts as a non-tariff trade barrier. A key finding of the study is that investing in languages education in the UK will most likely return more than the investment cost, even under conservative assumptions. The benefit-to-cost ratios are estimated to be at least 2:1 for promoting Arabic, French, Mandarin or Spanish education, meaning that spending £1 could return approximately £2.
The report's findings directly contribute to the evidence base in international economics and language policy and should be of interest to policy- and decision-makers both in language policy in general and in languages education in particular.
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