UK think tank calls for new English teaching TV channel

A UK think tank has called for a new free-to-air television channel dedicated to improving English language skills across the country, with the aim of achieving universal fluency in English by 2030.

British Future believes such a measure as part of wider government funding would help migrants from different parts of the world on their way to British citizenship and promote shared values and an understanding of life in the UK.

The government should make an additional 150 million pounds per year available for ESOL [English to Speakers of Other Languages] over the next four years, allocating this extra funding in the one-year spending round and over the 2021-2024 spending period, British Future notes in its report titled Speaking up: The case for universal fluency in English', released this week.

The additional money that is allocated should be used to encourage innovation, including setting up the Learning English freeview channel and supporting conversation clubs, allocating GBP 10 million annually for innovation, it said.

The report concludes that speaking English is the key to integration, helping migrants find decent work and become part of their local community. However, around 844,000 people living in England 1.6 per cent of all residents do not speak English well or at all, according to the last census in 2011.

The UK government's census data analysis shows that more than 6 in 10 people from an Indian or Pakistani background spoke English as their main language, and a further 3 in 10 didn't speak English as their main language but spoke it very well.

Among the South Asian groups that fell below this threshold, less than half (47.9 per cent) of people from a Bangladeshi background spoke English as their main language, 13.2 per cent spoke English but not well, and 3 per cent didn't speak English at all.

British Future said in its report: Some migrants struggle to learn because classes are oversubscribed or they cannot access funding to study at discounted rates. There is also a lack of study options for people who work long hours and cannot attend daytime classes.

Other countries have successfully addressed this by offering lessons via free-to-air television: annual running costs of such TV channels have been less than 2 million pounds with some of this outlay paid for by advertising. The channel would also broadcast material that helps promote integration and understanding of British life and culture from classic comedy and drama to programmes about British history.

It says that any new funding must be spent so it reaches the groups that are struggling, with employers doing more to support workplace-based English classes and citizens playing their part through conversation clubs in local communities.

It also recommends reform of fee regulations so people can start learning English when they first arrive in the UK, scrapping the requirement for students to have been resident in the UK for three years to qualify for free or co-funded courses and making ESOL free for asylum-seekers and other low-income groups.

The think tank pointed to Boris Johnson's commitment during his leadership race to become the new British Prime Minister last month, that he wanted everyone in the UK to be able to speak English and called for a common sense approach to the issue.

British Future, an independent think tank focussing on migration and integration issues, believes the debate about English has been bogged-down in needless disagreement for too long.

It notes: "On one side are voices of loud complaint about migrants not speaking English, matched with silence on practical proposals to actually help people to learn. On the other side are those complaining that aspirations towards everyone being able to speak English are colonialist', imposing an unwanted language on an unwilling migrant population... an expectation that that everyone living in the UK is able to communicate in English, or is learning to do so, should be foundational to our approach to integration.