Your point on 'why' - that standards are simply not a high priority - I think is spot on (and that they are being disingenuous about trade-offs). Interestingly, for a family whose children learn to read fluently at three, particularly at primary school, swapping 'standards' for 'fun' (e.g. the odd Forest School day) may be a reasonable position, particularly given Y7 starts at the same place for everyone. It is this class of people who were never convinced by the Gove reforms, and are forming the mainstay of Hymanism (along with genuine concerns on the bottom third - although I do fully agree with your concerns about how they are being addressed). I have a couple more thoughts on this, which I may turn into a full piece.
I suppose the only substantive area I'd disagree with is on languages. I personally think it's great to study languages, just as I think it's a shame people don't study Latin any more, because I like knowledge for its own sake. But it's very hard to make a case for them more broadly.
Translating and interpreting have always been poorly paid, and as for languages helping you elsewhere, as a Belgian friend of mine once said, ‘Why hire an English graduate in French, when you can hire a Belgian engineering graduate, who can also speak English and French, and is also an engineer?’ And this is the status quo before instant, cheap, good AI translation!
It seems likely that the best way to think of languages is like a subject with music: intellectually stimulating and demanding, do it if you’re genuinely passionate about it, and a shame if no-one at all did it - but equally, hard to see why we want large numbers of people doing it, other than for intellectual interest.
About a Belgian engineer who speaks English and French: the interesting thing is that the English system of education seems to find it impossible to produce engineers who also happen to speak French. Yes, a foreign language has a very low return on investment as a primary skill, but it can be quite valuable as a *secondary* skill.
Sorry. Don't agree with you at all about languages. As bit of linguist (fluent Fr Germ Ital) and neuroscience student / researcher, language learning provokes the brain in ways few other 'activities' can. And language is ongoing and cumulative -you cant compartmentalise it. Some brains have a head start for language, having already well endowed networks, so to speak. And there is a gene..COMT something . See Chantel Prat eeg research (not her book). About finances - cant comment: I'm 77, broke and happy. Because neuroscience is wonderful. God's work.
I agree with you about languages. I did French up to age 16, then had to learn it very quickly when I moved to Paris in my late twenties: I've never been so tired in all my life! It made me an advocate for effective MFL provision in primary schools. But while there are pockets of excellence, we don't do it very well. Instead, debates focus on increasing the number of people who take a MFL GCSE in Key Stage 4.
I've often heard it said that this would lead to an increase in A level take-up, and in time language degrees. However, this flies in the face of what we know. For one thing, the best MFL GCSE grades are achieved by high-attaining students, most of whom drop MFL when they move into sixth form. Indeed, MFL has one of the highest attrition rates of all subjects between KS4 and sixth form. You've put your finger on one of the most important reasons: poor employment prospects, leading to a negative impact on earnings. More broadly, we tend to ignore the fact that parents and carers don't care about MFL in the same way as they do (say) English, science, history - or almost anything, actually. Put it all together and it really is no surprise that even high-attaining students don't place significant value on languages.
The vocational point really stood out to me. I think we still too often talk about vocational routes as though they are the easier alternative for young people who struggle academically, rather than different routes requiring their own knowledge, aptitude and effort.
The same applies later with apprenticeships. They can be brilliant routes into work, but they are jobs first and often highly competitive. Treating “vocational” as shorthand for “less academic” risks underselling both the route and the young people taking it.
I also share the concern about generic employability skills. Confidence, communication and teamwork matter, but they become much more meaningful when young people actually have knowledge and experience to draw on.
“In the case of senior managers in school, what do you want the senior manager to focus their marginal unit of effort on? Thinking about how to improve pedagogy in the typical maths lesson? Or combing through equivalencies tables to find the easiest new qualification that counts in the league tables?”
This is exactly what will happen. What schools are held accountable for shapes where leaders put their time and attention. If we dilute that focus we risk losing sight of our core purpose: ensuring children learn. Secure foundations in English and maths can open doors to the wider curriculum and opportunities beyond school, particularly for children facing disadvantage. We cannot afford to lose that focus.
Ah, yes. Education is full of "40mph speed limit on all roads" compromises. Often, it looks something like this. Group A thinks that X is Very Important and needs to be prioritized. Group B thinks that X is a Waste of Time for most students and wants to eliminate it. The compromise is to reduce the number of hours devoted to X, and then pack into those reduced hours substantially more content than can reasonably be mastered during that time, resulting in poor learning and increased stress for the students. You'll absolutely see this in higher education, btw.
As for foreign languages: as translation technology improves, it's quite likely that the level of English proficiency in the non-English speaking world will decline. This means that, as long as a Brit is armed with a phone, he'll never have trouble buying a croissant in a rural French bakery (not that this couldn't be accomplished before by skillful pointing), but may find it harder to find a Parisian capable of conversing in English. And while people don't particularly mind using an artificial translator/interpreter for getting simple transactions done, I am far from convinced they'll feel the same about more in-depth conversations (be they for work or for play). So, paradoxically, the need for foreign language proficiency may actually increase in the English-speaking world (from the current hyper-low level to a low-but-not-hyper-low level). Just my 2c.
Thank you for setting this out so clearly. People who agree with the government direction in education are doing so from an ideological stance inured from a well established evidence base. I'm not sure they do in fact agree so much as have been taken in by the rhetoric or the alignment of its proponents with their broader political persuasion. Or simply cannot reason. One way your posts are so valuable is they unmask the known fallacies on which these policy proposals rest. The more people become aware of the facts the less agreement and support for the present government direction there may be.
Education policy has to focus first and foremost on the forgotten third, and the reason it has failed to do so is partly because low educational attainment tracks disadvantage so closely; partly because many schools regard them as a structural inevitability; and partly because schools - and Ofsted - tend to measure themselves against a weak national average. (Only this week I heard a vigorous argument for recognising the children for whom ‘a 2 is a ceiling’ when I was critiquing a history cohort where over half failed to get a 4; and a school defending their 71% English and Maths 4+ rate among children with <90% attendance and no disadvantage or SEN.) There are schools who have been very successful in raising standards for all - but these are overwhelmingly in urban areas with large immigrant populations for whom education is seen as empowering; and, crucially, plenty of job opportunities. Raising standards in white British rural areas faces many more barriers.
Let’s not forget that the 2011 Wolf Review of Vocational Education examined the English system for 14–19-year-olds and found serious problems with the qualifications being offered and the incentives driving schools to use them. Some vocational awards had been promoted because they improved schools' performance-table results, rather than because they served pupils' long-term interests. And some pupils found that the qualifications did not permit progression to the courses they had expected to take.
But the failure of some vocational qualifications does not establish that vocational education itself is a failure. A well-designed apprenticeship, with rigorous occupational training, recognised standards and employer involvement is very different from a low-value qualification taken primarily to boost a school's statistics.
The current government's proposed vocational GCSEs and V Levels therefore need to be judged on their content, assessment standards, employer recognition and progression into employment or further education. Giving them parity of status just by ministerial declaration cannot guarantee parity of value in the labour market.
It would be reassuring to hear Lucy Powell say “We’ve learnt the lessons from the Wolf Review and we’re not going to make the same mistakes again”.
How depressing that these things are launched as if there was a vacuum to be filled, rather than a busy landscape that should be navigated carefully. It also smacks of "we know best" and indicates that evidence is not used in the formulation of policy (or only very selective evidence). They need to read your book on edu-myths and learn from past mistakes.
Great!!! Thanks. From new Zealand. Small new as we wait tentatively for next govt here. Big Z in hope people will stop trashing education and teachers will have courage to get on with teaching. They're so good at that. Im a neuroscientist student/ researcher. Effort = increased myelination, which equals faster networking. Fun doesn't hv same outcomes. Nope. Xx
I think you're right that increasing vocational skills learning in schools may falter. I'd suggest that it'll falter because there aren't enough qualified teachers to teach the courses. The gap in the market that is frequently mentioned is building and construction. That covers a wide area including bricklaying, plumbing, plastering, carpentry, electrical work. I seriously doubt that there are enough qualified teachers available. Although of course academy schools can employ unqualified staff. The fly in the ointment for me is that if a school leaver wants to embark on a carrier that more vocational than academic, whether that's being a plumber, a blacksmith, a gardener, a cook, an actor, a dancer ...the list goes on, why would you create yet more academic hurdles for them to scale. These are the trades they would have learned by a combination of F.E. courses and a practical apprenticeship. The other fly in the ointment is there are so few manufacturing companies operating in the UK that can offer such apprenticeship learning opportunities. The term apprenticeship has its root in the French verb apprendre meaning to learn. Now apprenticeships, if they exist at all, offer the chance for the brightest academic students with good A levels to get a degree while earning.
I think this is excellent. I am in favour of reform of the current system, for a variety of reasons I set out elsewhere, but I despair at the quick fix mindset we keep on getting. We need to aim for a reformed curriculum for first teaching in 2040, and spend the next few years properly developing what that would look like, with careful attention to perverse incentives, and above all with a view of education that does not reduce it to employability skills. After all, by 2040, the robots will be in charge anyway.
Brilliant and comprehensive, Daisy. Without putting words in your mouth, it feels like the politicians are mainly lightweights who don’t really care about what they know and don’t know, what works and what doesn’t, and that enduring progress sometimes happens almost as a fluke when someone like Nick Gibb gets to stay in the same role for years and hold the line. Keep going, don’t give up!
The 'No Fun' era of schooling has unfortunately coincided with a significant decline in the quality of school leavers, seen from a university POV.
Even allowing that
(a) skill-based curricula are nonsense (& a scourge in universities as well!)
(b) PISA is real and certainly measures something meaningful
There should be some scepticism about just how 'successful' the reforms have been, in a broader academic sense. Students used to turn up to university able to write an essay -- they no longer can. They generally struggle with independent work, being autonomous, setting goals, locating resources on their own, etc etc. Everyone I know in academia has more or less the same assessment -- the students have got worse and are 2-3 years 'behind' where they used to be (the MAs are like the degree used to be, the final years are like the first years were). This observation is true in my experience at all levels from the top unis to the bottom.
There are some obvious confounding factors (phones, covid, expanding access, international recruitment standards, no part time jobs etc), and I don't think there's any sign of better outcomes in Scotland(!) -- but when schools are trying to maximise outcomes and teach a lot of content, the form of instruction will inevitably become very full and rather 'scaffolded.' There's just no other way to do it. There is no space for the kids to practice independence, forethought, solving their own (unscaffolded) problems, and Getting Things Done.
I share your scepticism about 'Oracy.' I find young people are already very eloquent and can express themselves well. They will give a reasoned, insightful, reflective account of why they didn't do any work and are finding it hard. But this doesn't help them become effective or do anything. It's a weird, shallow performance, which they are already in effect being 'taught' IMO.
What I would value is Agency, or Autonomy. Wanting things, setting goals, being challenged, figuring it out and being effective. How you find space for it is another matter, but it's a big and obvious problem in the profile of the average school-leaver.
It's a sad irony is the "both / and" approach could actually be beneficial if the gov were willing, as you say, to put in the hard yards of challenging their base views. For instance, I agree with you when you say that in a sense, learning can never be "fun". But no politician would want to touch a statement like that with a barge pole. A good faith argument could be made that by focusing on standards in way that is not intuitively or obviously "fun", we as educators are ultimately helping to facilitate a life for students that is more meaningfully "fun" in the long run. But this would require thinking through what constitutes "fun" and not just assuming an equivalence with entertainment. Put differently, when I engage in difficult learning, like languages, I find it hard, but satisfying. When I watch trash TV, I find it easy, but entertaining. Both are "fun" in a way, but the former is more educationally advantageous than the latter.
And like Edrith (who also commented), I'd want to add to the argument in favour of language learning. I'd want to argue firstly that there's an inherent value in learning languages. I.e. they have their own beauty, which is worth it. But secondly, that learning languages is hard, in a way that learning other subjects often isn't. Therefore, learning languages is excellent grist for the cognitive mill.
Some learning can be fun. In my sixth form days, I got a lot of fun from reading and understanding novels.
That said, I think you are right to distinguish between "fun" and "satisfaction". "Satisfaction" can mean a sense of making progress, a sense of achievement, a sense of having worked hard to achieve a result. Satisfaction comes (in part) from others recognising your effort, application and achievement, but to support self-worth, it also needs to come from within: "I did well, and I know I did".
The problem is, many young people have a repeated sense of failure. They don't pass exams, they don't get recognition and if they have self-worth (which isn't a given), they may find it somewhere other than the classroom - through sport, computer games and such like.
I really only understood this when I started working in post-16 and adult vocational education. Suddenly, people who saw themselves as failures at school found something they were good at; finally, they got recognition, a sense of achievement and a sense of self-worth.
I was fortunate to play a small part in the early days of University Technical Colleges and later, to write a book about them. One of the things I like best is seeing 14-year-olds get the sense of achievement from UTC specialisms (engineering, product design, health and sports science, software engineering and cyber security, to name a few) that I'd previously only seen in post-16 settings and adult education. Learning is still hard. It's not always fun, by any means. But it's often very satisfying.
Really great piece.
Your point on 'why' - that standards are simply not a high priority - I think is spot on (and that they are being disingenuous about trade-offs). Interestingly, for a family whose children learn to read fluently at three, particularly at primary school, swapping 'standards' for 'fun' (e.g. the odd Forest School day) may be a reasonable position, particularly given Y7 starts at the same place for everyone. It is this class of people who were never convinced by the Gove reforms, and are forming the mainstay of Hymanism (along with genuine concerns on the bottom third - although I do fully agree with your concerns about how they are being addressed). I have a couple more thoughts on this, which I may turn into a full piece.
I suppose the only substantive area I'd disagree with is on languages. I personally think it's great to study languages, just as I think it's a shame people don't study Latin any more, because I like knowledge for its own sake. But it's very hard to make a case for them more broadly.
Taking a language A-Level actually has a negative impact on earnings (due to the opportunity cost for anyone smart enough to do a language A-Level) and languages is one of the lowest subject returns at university, only marginally above creative and performing arts (see Figure 5.6, here: https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2026-07/IFS%20Report%20-%20New%20estimates%20of%20the%20impact%20of%20undergraduate%20degrees%20on%20lifetime%20earnings_changed.pdf – this is for the cohort who took GCSEs in 2002).
Translating and interpreting have always been poorly paid, and as for languages helping you elsewhere, as a Belgian friend of mine once said, ‘Why hire an English graduate in French, when you can hire a Belgian engineering graduate, who can also speak English and French, and is also an engineer?’ And this is the status quo before instant, cheap, good AI translation!
It seems likely that the best way to think of languages is like a subject with music: intellectually stimulating and demanding, do it if you’re genuinely passionate about it, and a shame if no-one at all did it - but equally, hard to see why we want large numbers of people doing it, other than for intellectual interest.
About a Belgian engineer who speaks English and French: the interesting thing is that the English system of education seems to find it impossible to produce engineers who also happen to speak French. Yes, a foreign language has a very low return on investment as a primary skill, but it can be quite valuable as a *secondary* skill.
Sorry. Don't agree with you at all about languages. As bit of linguist (fluent Fr Germ Ital) and neuroscience student / researcher, language learning provokes the brain in ways few other 'activities' can. And language is ongoing and cumulative -you cant compartmentalise it. Some brains have a head start for language, having already well endowed networks, so to speak. And there is a gene..COMT something . See Chantel Prat eeg research (not her book). About finances - cant comment: I'm 77, broke and happy. Because neuroscience is wonderful. God's work.
I am sorry, but I do not understand. In what way does what you wrote contradict anything that I wrote?
I think she replied to the wrong messages. I believe she wanted reply to Edith.
I agree with you about languages. I did French up to age 16, then had to learn it very quickly when I moved to Paris in my late twenties: I've never been so tired in all my life! It made me an advocate for effective MFL provision in primary schools. But while there are pockets of excellence, we don't do it very well. Instead, debates focus on increasing the number of people who take a MFL GCSE in Key Stage 4.
I've often heard it said that this would lead to an increase in A level take-up, and in time language degrees. However, this flies in the face of what we know. For one thing, the best MFL GCSE grades are achieved by high-attaining students, most of whom drop MFL when they move into sixth form. Indeed, MFL has one of the highest attrition rates of all subjects between KS4 and sixth form. You've put your finger on one of the most important reasons: poor employment prospects, leading to a negative impact on earnings. More broadly, we tend to ignore the fact that parents and carers don't care about MFL in the same way as they do (say) English, science, history - or almost anything, actually. Put it all together and it really is no surprise that even high-attaining students don't place significant value on languages.
The vocational point really stood out to me. I think we still too often talk about vocational routes as though they are the easier alternative for young people who struggle academically, rather than different routes requiring their own knowledge, aptitude and effort.
The same applies later with apprenticeships. They can be brilliant routes into work, but they are jobs first and often highly competitive. Treating “vocational” as shorthand for “less academic” risks underselling both the route and the young people taking it.
I also share the concern about generic employability skills. Confidence, communication and teamwork matter, but they become much more meaningful when young people actually have knowledge and experience to draw on.
As a school and system leader, this stood out:
“In the case of senior managers in school, what do you want the senior manager to focus their marginal unit of effort on? Thinking about how to improve pedagogy in the typical maths lesson? Or combing through equivalencies tables to find the easiest new qualification that counts in the league tables?”
This is exactly what will happen. What schools are held accountable for shapes where leaders put their time and attention. If we dilute that focus we risk losing sight of our core purpose: ensuring children learn. Secure foundations in English and maths can open doors to the wider curriculum and opportunities beyond school, particularly for children facing disadvantage. We cannot afford to lose that focus.
Ah, yes. Education is full of "40mph speed limit on all roads" compromises. Often, it looks something like this. Group A thinks that X is Very Important and needs to be prioritized. Group B thinks that X is a Waste of Time for most students and wants to eliminate it. The compromise is to reduce the number of hours devoted to X, and then pack into those reduced hours substantially more content than can reasonably be mastered during that time, resulting in poor learning and increased stress for the students. You'll absolutely see this in higher education, btw.
As for foreign languages: as translation technology improves, it's quite likely that the level of English proficiency in the non-English speaking world will decline. This means that, as long as a Brit is armed with a phone, he'll never have trouble buying a croissant in a rural French bakery (not that this couldn't be accomplished before by skillful pointing), but may find it harder to find a Parisian capable of conversing in English. And while people don't particularly mind using an artificial translator/interpreter for getting simple transactions done, I am far from convinced they'll feel the same about more in-depth conversations (be they for work or for play). So, paradoxically, the need for foreign language proficiency may actually increase in the English-speaking world (from the current hyper-low level to a low-but-not-hyper-low level). Just my 2c.
Thank you for setting this out so clearly. People who agree with the government direction in education are doing so from an ideological stance inured from a well established evidence base. I'm not sure they do in fact agree so much as have been taken in by the rhetoric or the alignment of its proponents with their broader political persuasion. Or simply cannot reason. One way your posts are so valuable is they unmask the known fallacies on which these policy proposals rest. The more people become aware of the facts the less agreement and support for the present government direction there may be.
Education policy has to focus first and foremost on the forgotten third, and the reason it has failed to do so is partly because low educational attainment tracks disadvantage so closely; partly because many schools regard them as a structural inevitability; and partly because schools - and Ofsted - tend to measure themselves against a weak national average. (Only this week I heard a vigorous argument for recognising the children for whom ‘a 2 is a ceiling’ when I was critiquing a history cohort where over half failed to get a 4; and a school defending their 71% English and Maths 4+ rate among children with <90% attendance and no disadvantage or SEN.) There are schools who have been very successful in raising standards for all - but these are overwhelmingly in urban areas with large immigrant populations for whom education is seen as empowering; and, crucially, plenty of job opportunities. Raising standards in white British rural areas faces many more barriers.
Let’s not forget that the 2011 Wolf Review of Vocational Education examined the English system for 14–19-year-olds and found serious problems with the qualifications being offered and the incentives driving schools to use them. Some vocational awards had been promoted because they improved schools' performance-table results, rather than because they served pupils' long-term interests. And some pupils found that the qualifications did not permit progression to the courses they had expected to take.
But the failure of some vocational qualifications does not establish that vocational education itself is a failure. A well-designed apprenticeship, with rigorous occupational training, recognised standards and employer involvement is very different from a low-value qualification taken primarily to boost a school's statistics.
The current government's proposed vocational GCSEs and V Levels therefore need to be judged on their content, assessment standards, employer recognition and progression into employment or further education. Giving them parity of status just by ministerial declaration cannot guarantee parity of value in the labour market.
It would be reassuring to hear Lucy Powell say “We’ve learnt the lessons from the Wolf Review and we’re not going to make the same mistakes again”.
Perhaps this is the governments way of supporting the independent sector after VAT?
How depressing that these things are launched as if there was a vacuum to be filled, rather than a busy landscape that should be navigated carefully. It also smacks of "we know best" and indicates that evidence is not used in the formulation of policy (or only very selective evidence). They need to read your book on edu-myths and learn from past mistakes.
Great!!! Thanks. From new Zealand. Small new as we wait tentatively for next govt here. Big Z in hope people will stop trashing education and teachers will have courage to get on with teaching. They're so good at that. Im a neuroscientist student/ researcher. Effort = increased myelination, which equals faster networking. Fun doesn't hv same outcomes. Nope. Xx
I think you're right that increasing vocational skills learning in schools may falter. I'd suggest that it'll falter because there aren't enough qualified teachers to teach the courses. The gap in the market that is frequently mentioned is building and construction. That covers a wide area including bricklaying, plumbing, plastering, carpentry, electrical work. I seriously doubt that there are enough qualified teachers available. Although of course academy schools can employ unqualified staff. The fly in the ointment for me is that if a school leaver wants to embark on a carrier that more vocational than academic, whether that's being a plumber, a blacksmith, a gardener, a cook, an actor, a dancer ...the list goes on, why would you create yet more academic hurdles for them to scale. These are the trades they would have learned by a combination of F.E. courses and a practical apprenticeship. The other fly in the ointment is there are so few manufacturing companies operating in the UK that can offer such apprenticeship learning opportunities. The term apprenticeship has its root in the French verb apprendre meaning to learn. Now apprenticeships, if they exist at all, offer the chance for the brightest academic students with good A levels to get a degree while earning.
Every Labour policymaker and adviser should read and absorb this
Was that an auto correct from every bloody? ;<)
Corrected!
I think this is excellent. I am in favour of reform of the current system, for a variety of reasons I set out elsewhere, but I despair at the quick fix mindset we keep on getting. We need to aim for a reformed curriculum for first teaching in 2040, and spend the next few years properly developing what that would look like, with careful attention to perverse incentives, and above all with a view of education that does not reduce it to employability skills. After all, by 2040, the robots will be in charge anyway.
Brilliant and comprehensive, Daisy. Without putting words in your mouth, it feels like the politicians are mainly lightweights who don’t really care about what they know and don’t know, what works and what doesn’t, and that enduring progress sometimes happens almost as a fluke when someone like Nick Gibb gets to stay in the same role for years and hold the line. Keep going, don’t give up!
The 'No Fun' era of schooling has unfortunately coincided with a significant decline in the quality of school leavers, seen from a university POV.
Even allowing that
(a) skill-based curricula are nonsense (& a scourge in universities as well!)
(b) PISA is real and certainly measures something meaningful
There should be some scepticism about just how 'successful' the reforms have been, in a broader academic sense. Students used to turn up to university able to write an essay -- they no longer can. They generally struggle with independent work, being autonomous, setting goals, locating resources on their own, etc etc. Everyone I know in academia has more or less the same assessment -- the students have got worse and are 2-3 years 'behind' where they used to be (the MAs are like the degree used to be, the final years are like the first years were). This observation is true in my experience at all levels from the top unis to the bottom.
There are some obvious confounding factors (phones, covid, expanding access, international recruitment standards, no part time jobs etc), and I don't think there's any sign of better outcomes in Scotland(!) -- but when schools are trying to maximise outcomes and teach a lot of content, the form of instruction will inevitably become very full and rather 'scaffolded.' There's just no other way to do it. There is no space for the kids to practice independence, forethought, solving their own (unscaffolded) problems, and Getting Things Done.
I share your scepticism about 'Oracy.' I find young people are already very eloquent and can express themselves well. They will give a reasoned, insightful, reflective account of why they didn't do any work and are finding it hard. But this doesn't help them become effective or do anything. It's a weird, shallow performance, which they are already in effect being 'taught' IMO.
What I would value is Agency, or Autonomy. Wanting things, setting goals, being challenged, figuring it out and being effective. How you find space for it is another matter, but it's a big and obvious problem in the profile of the average school-leaver.
Great article, thank you for sharing.
It's a sad irony is the "both / and" approach could actually be beneficial if the gov were willing, as you say, to put in the hard yards of challenging their base views. For instance, I agree with you when you say that in a sense, learning can never be "fun". But no politician would want to touch a statement like that with a barge pole. A good faith argument could be made that by focusing on standards in way that is not intuitively or obviously "fun", we as educators are ultimately helping to facilitate a life for students that is more meaningfully "fun" in the long run. But this would require thinking through what constitutes "fun" and not just assuming an equivalence with entertainment. Put differently, when I engage in difficult learning, like languages, I find it hard, but satisfying. When I watch trash TV, I find it easy, but entertaining. Both are "fun" in a way, but the former is more educationally advantageous than the latter.
And like Edrith (who also commented), I'd want to add to the argument in favour of language learning. I'd want to argue firstly that there's an inherent value in learning languages. I.e. they have their own beauty, which is worth it. But secondly, that learning languages is hard, in a way that learning other subjects often isn't. Therefore, learning languages is excellent grist for the cognitive mill.
Some learning can be fun. In my sixth form days, I got a lot of fun from reading and understanding novels.
That said, I think you are right to distinguish between "fun" and "satisfaction". "Satisfaction" can mean a sense of making progress, a sense of achievement, a sense of having worked hard to achieve a result. Satisfaction comes (in part) from others recognising your effort, application and achievement, but to support self-worth, it also needs to come from within: "I did well, and I know I did".
The problem is, many young people have a repeated sense of failure. They don't pass exams, they don't get recognition and if they have self-worth (which isn't a given), they may find it somewhere other than the classroom - through sport, computer games and such like.
I really only understood this when I started working in post-16 and adult vocational education. Suddenly, people who saw themselves as failures at school found something they were good at; finally, they got recognition, a sense of achievement and a sense of self-worth.
I was fortunate to play a small part in the early days of University Technical Colleges and later, to write a book about them. One of the things I like best is seeing 14-year-olds get the sense of achievement from UTC specialisms (engineering, product design, health and sports science, software engineering and cyber security, to name a few) that I'd previously only seen in post-16 settings and adult education. Learning is still hard. It's not always fun, by any means. But it's often very satisfying.