What Japan Can Learn from the UK Debate on Higher English Requirements
This post draws on an article published by The Conversation:
“English lessons shouldn’t be an immigration test – why the UK’s new policy risks deepening exclusion”
The article begins with a simple but powerful question:
What happens when learning English stops being a bridge into society and starts to feel like a test of belonging you can fail?
In the UK, the government has proposed raising English-language requirements for most visa routes. The policy aims to improve “integration” and workforce readiness by requiring higher proficiency across speaking, reading, writing, and listening—along with stricter testing standards and fewer exemptions. Ministers describe this as a pathway to “opportunity.”
However, the authors warn that it may do the opposite. Instead of supporting inclusion, the policy risks turning English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) into a tool of surveillance and immigration control—making English feel less like a shared resource and more like a kind of border.
While this is a UK debate, the underlying logic is highly relevant to Japan. As Japan continues to discuss language, integration, and long-term settlement, we face a similar question: Will language policy open doors—or quietly build new gates?
Language Helps People Live Together—but It Can Also Exclude
The article reminds us that language is essential to daily life. It helps people build relationships, find work, participate in communities, and engage with democracy. At the same time, language can also be used to divide, label, and exclude.
Traditionally, for non-native speakers, learning English has been about navigating everyday life, expressing oneself, and feeling at home. The proposed UK approach, however, frames English proficiency as a “test of belonging”—something that must be proven, measured, and monitored.
This shift matters. When language becomes an “acceptance condition,” the purpose of learning changes. It stops being supportive education and starts looking like compliance.
Japan should take note here. It is one thing to encourage language learning as part of social participation. It is another to link language too tightly to people’s right to stay.
A Ten-Year “Staged Progress” Requirement Can Punish the Most Vulnerable
According to the article, the UK plan would require migrants seeking settlement or citizenship to demonstrate staged progress in English over a ten-year period, moving from basic to upper-intermediate levels. This would be tied to a points-based system that also tracks employment and civic participation.
On paper, staged progress sounds reasonable. In real life, it often is not.
Language acquisition is not linear. Progress depends on many factors: trauma, health conditions, caring responsibilities, work schedules, and prior education. For refugees and others who have experienced displacement or interrupted schooling, the expectation of steady, testable improvement can become unrealistic—and even punitive.
This point has direct relevance for Japan. If Japan ever moves toward stronger language-linked conditions for long-term residence, renewals, or settlement, we must ask:
Are learning opportunities truly equal?
If not, requirements will not measure effort or “integration.” They will measure access to time, stability, childcare, and local support.
The Most Dangerous Shift: When Language Turns into a Moral Judgment
One of the strongest warnings in the article is how quickly language proficiency can become moralized.
When tests become high-stakes, passing is interpreted as “trying hard,” while failing is read as laziness. Fluency becomes linked to being a “good” or “deserving” migrant. Higher proficiency is framed as commitment to national identity, while lower ability can be portrayed as resistance.
This is not just unfair—it is socially corrosive.
Japan is not immune to this risk. Once the public starts equating language ability with “good character” or “worthiness,” language policy can become a quiet form of discrimination. People who are working long hours, raising children, recovering from illness, or living in isolated areas may be judged not for their actions but for the speed of their language progress.
A healthy society should not confuse language proficiency with morality.
When Attendance and Test Scores Become “Monitoring Data,” Education Breaks
The article also warns about surveillance dynamics. Attendance, test results, and progression targets can turn into “data points” used to monitor behavior, rather than tools to support learning.
This shift changes what happens in the classroom. Teachers may feel pressured to prioritize performance indicators over dialogue, confidence-building, and community connection. Education becomes a system of auditing rather than empowerment.
This problem is especially relevant wherever authorities demand measurable outcomes.
Japan, too, often relies on indicators—attendance rates, completion numbers, exam scores—to justify budgets and programs. Accountability is important, but if the system values only what can be measured, it can unintentionally damage what matters most: real-world communication, trust, and belonging.
Integration cannot be engineered through fear of failure.
A Policy Detached from Reality: Requirements Rise While Support Remains Thin
Beyond ideology, the article argues that the proposed policy fails practically.
ESOL provision in the UK is already underfunded and uneven. Community and voluntary providers—often the ones supporting the most marginalized learners—are expected to deliver high-stakes outcomes with limited resources.
At the same time, the policy offers no meaningful commitments to teacher training, pay, or access support for women, refugees, or rural learners. There is little attention to barriers such as trauma, childcare needs, or transport. Nor is there serious engagement with trauma-informed or learner-centered teaching.
Instead, the model is described as technocratic—valuing what can be counted over what actually helps learners.
This is a key takeaway for Japan: If requirements increase, support must increase first—not later, and not only on paper. Otherwise, language policy becomes a mechanism that screens people out, not a system that helps people participate.
What Japan Can Do: Design Language Policy to Open Doors, Not Lock Them
The article makes a broader argument: language should help people connect, not police their right to stay. It also emphasizes that linguistic diversity is not a problem to be solved—it is a public resource that enriches communities and strengthens democracy.
From that perspective, Japan can consider several practical principles if language policy is discussed in relation to long-term residence and settlement:
1) Build learning infrastructure before raising expectations
Access must be real, not symbolic: flexible schedules, online options, childcare support, transport support, and fair regional provision.
2) Focus assessment on real-world participation
Assessment should prioritize everyday communication and civic participation—not abstract benchmarks that silence voices or narrow “acceptable” speech.
3) Improve the host society’s accessibility in parallel
Language learning should not carry everything. Public services should expand multilingual information, interpreting support, and plain-language communication.
4) Recognize integration as a two-way process
The article stresses that host communities have as much to learn as newcomers. This matters in Japan, where “integration” is sometimes framed as a one-sided demand placed only on migrants.
Conclusion: The Goal Is Not “Control,” but Trust
The article ends with a powerful idea: the task ahead is not to “restore control” over language, but to restore trust—in learners, in teachers, and in the value of linguistic diversity.
Japan’s policy choices will shape whether language becomes a bridge or a border. If language requirements are linked too tightly to status and belonging, society risks reinforcing inequality rather than reducing it. We may also damage the very democratic values that language education should support: fairness, participation, and inclusion.
Language should unite, not divide.
If we truly believe in empowerment, then education should amplify voices—not diminish them.