In recent research the British Council placed Mandarin in the top five most important languages for Britain's prosperity, security and influence. But it found only 1 percent of the adult population speaks Mandarin to a level that allows them to conduct a basic conversation.

Last year, just 3,000 students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland entered the General Certificate of Secondary Education in Chinese, compared with 177,000 entrants for French, 91,000 for Spanish and 62,000 for German, and well behind the number of entrants for Urdu, Polish and Arabic.

But the popularity of Chinese languages improves at the more advanced A-level, where they were the fourth most popular modern languages last year, with 3,300 entrants compared with 11,000 taking A-level French and 4,200 taking German.

When British Prime Minister David Cameron visited China in December he urged Britain's young people to learn Mandarin.

At the time, he also said funding for an expansion of the UK-China School Partnerships program will double the number of Chinese- language assistants in the UK by 2016 and provide increased funding to lower the cost to schools of offering Mandarin as a language option.

The UK-China School Partnerships program brings together the British Council and Hanban, the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language. This project has allowed 60 head teachers to make study visits to China this year.