I have to wonder whether any of the people at the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) referred to in this BBC News story ever actually went to school. They certainly didn't go to my school.

I remember making my subject choices at school. I was not particularly good at languages at school, but even then (many years ago) I understood that languages might make a huge difference to my work options. The problem was that I was not given the option: to do a foreign langauge in the 6th form, I would have had to drop one of my science classes. That really defeats the object, To use a foreign language to make me more employable in a science or engineering job, I need both the language and the science education.

When politicians say that "more children [are] learning languages", what they really mean is that more are learning languages instead of science, rather than in addition. This is typical a politician's answer: the appearance of relevant facts, but not actually relevant, and the appearance of doing something to improve education, when in fact making it worse.

The whole topic of languages in addition to science or engineering subjects is not even addressed in the BBC article, so maybe I should blame the BBC, and the author (Judith Burns).