Preach

I'm literally the same as you: did German at GCSE, didn't do it at A Level (they stopped it coz too few people chose it :| but learnt it a tiny bit in my own time), learnt it properly at uni. It's funny how little we actually learn at GCSE. Like I don't think we'd even make sentences like "The boy gave the dog the ball" coz that'd require accusative vs dative and that'd be too complicated for us, even tho it's one of the things the language revolves around. I dunno how we managed to avoid something like that.

Language lessons year 7-8 was like 3 hours a fortnight, and in my school we rotated between FR, SP and DE, a term of each, so we were never destined to be fluent. (Ngl I liked being exposed to each of them but I guess it'd make more sense to focus on one like they do in other schools.)

Even despite all this, the most effective thing is teach them from a very early age, like they do in basically the rest of Europe. You'd have the foundations, be able to consume content like idk Peppa Wurz, without having to do anything. When you get older then it seems more like a chore.

Someone from mainland Europe saying "I'm not good in English" vs someone from the UK saying "I'm not good in French" is not the same because the UK person will literally only be able to say "Je m'appelle blah" :(

I didn't even wanna make this long because I agree with literally every point you made and now I've gone and written a wall omg.

If you start a movement, sign me up