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Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Education – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 12 November 2018.

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Photo of Nick Gibb Nick Gibb Minister of State (Education) 12:00, 12 November 2018

My hon. Friend has raised an important point. In 2017, approximately 91 state-maintained schools entered students for Chinese GCSE. There were 3,654 GCSE entries in that year, and 2,800 A-level entries in 2018. Maintained secondary schools must teach a foreign language at key stage 3, and we fund 64 schools for the Mandarin excellence programme, which is intended to put 5,000 students on track towards becoming fluent in Mandarin.