Education Secretary Michael Gove said this week that every child over the age of five should learn a foreign language in school.

On a recent post on his blog, the Bishop of Bradford, the Right Reverend Nick Baines, fluent in Russian and German, welcomed Mr Gove’s statement, but asked which languages the education secretary had in mind, whether they would be made compulsory at GCSE, and if language teaching would be changed to help initiate independent thought and speech.

In an earlier blog the Bishop said: “Language teaching in our schools is heroic. But many teachers feel they are fighting a losing battle against cultural and political forces that are rooted in an island mentality.

“We might understand the emphasis on science and technology in schools, but the relegation of language learning to a not-very-enthusiastically-encouraged poor option says much about the British understanding of identity, communication and business...

“We Brits seem to find language learning too hard. Yet, we have Asian kids in our schools who move easily and unselfconsciously between two, three or four languages.

“Language learning is being presented as less important than other studies, ignoring the importance not only of ‘knowing stuff’, but also ‘being able to communicate it’.

Councillor Ralph Berry, portfolio holder for children and young people’s services, said: “The idea is not bad in itself. Evidence is that starting younger is better – but we have a pretty big job with getting English improved.

“Resourcing the new language at the expense of that would be utterly stupid. Any distraction from that at this time on a Home Counties-driven agenda is not going to help.”

Stephen Fry, currently presenting the series Planet Word on BBC2, believes that language is the key shaper and transformer for human beings.

He said in an interview: “In our limited and foolish way, we may think skin colour a greater determinant of identity, but an Ibo would feel no more in common with a Jamaican, I submit, than he would with me.

“Our individual language may or may not limit or widen our thought...but it seems most certainly to place us in the world like no other property or quality we possess.

“The language you speak is at one and the same time entirely your own and that of your clan, your tribe, your nation and your people.”

But English as a second language – to Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Polish and Slovakian, for example – is an endemic problem in many of Bradford’s inner-city schools.

A year ago the T&A carried a story about Thornbury Primary School being placed in special measures by Oftsed – joining four others. Among the summary of the school’s problems was “a more than average proportion learning English as an additional language.”

Councillor Berry believes that Bradford has huge untapped linguistic talent, but added: “We have to maintain a hard-nosed approach to the fundamentals at this time. I would have thought we would get Mr Gove’s support on that.

“The priority given in all schools to improving English speaking and literacy is of the utmost importance. We need staff whose main skill is in that area, and not to pass off the task to teachers whose main skill is not in languages,” he added.