The estimated 500,000 ethnic Chinese living in Britain make it the largest overseas Chinese population of any European country.
Professor Dame Helen Wallace, the British Academy's foreign secretary, said her organisation had been arguing for an improvement in foreign language skills, and had identified Mandarin as one of the extended range of languages to be promoted in schools.
But a lack of qualified teachers could be a barrier to improving its popularity, Wallace said.
"The supply chain needs to work in both ways. Children need to be persuaded to do it and you need the availability of capable teachers at all levels – primary, secondary and university – to develop positive reinforcement in the availability of teachers and the interest of teachers."
And she warned: "No such strategy works unless you stick at it. There's no use doing this for two or three years and then forgetting about it – you have to make a long-term investment in this kind of change capacity."Laura Chan, one of the co-founders of the Marco Polo Academy, a bilingual Mandarin-English primary school opening in Barnet next September as part of the free schools programme, said the prime minister's announcement was good news for the status of Mandarin.
"It's a great help. It will increase people's awareness of Mandarin as a language they can learn," she said.
"One reason we wanted to set up the free school is that the teaching of language in the UK is not particularly effective, especially for young children."
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