Any British “tiger mother” worth her stripes has insisted on her child learning Mandarin to get a head start in life. Now ni hao (hello) may no longer be enough: Arabic is being rebranded in the hope that it will capture the imagination of British schools — and parents — as a foreign language option.
Amid the long-term decline of French and German at GCSE and A level, Qatar is donating £400,000 to a British Council programme that promotes Arabic teaching in British classrooms. At present it is taught in only 300, or less than 1 per cent, of schools.
The Qataris believe that Arabic is the business language of the future and a British Council report said it would become the second most important
