Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) hasn't reached the sort of levels of take up seen across much of Europe. It is easy to speculate and discuss some of the reasons for this and some of the argument is well rehearsed. An initial look at the state of language study in the UK reveals a number of factors including:

• Lower levels of take up of language as a whole
• Focus on a number of languages as opposed to a concentration on English. It is apparent that this tends to diffuse efforts and reduce potential class sizes. This leads to issues of economic viability for some language classes and makes any team-teaching between language and content teacher even less viable than one individual in the classroom.
• Lack of commitment to language education by students
• The possibility to stop language study mid way through secondary school
• Less of the curriculum dedicated to language
• Lower levels of language competence in students coming out of many UK schools
• Many students not seeing the need to learn languages since 'everyone speaks English now'
• The National Curriculum initiative to some extent inhibited initiatives such as CLIL and Team Teaching through being over prescriptive.

These factors and others have meant that there is often less time spent on languages and less importance attached to languages by University level students. This lack of importance attached to language learning is also often encountered in content teachers in Higher Education across the UK.

Web searches for CLIL in the website of the UK Higher Education Academy Subject Network for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies reveals just one success http://www.llas.ac.uk/index.aspx. This site is a major focal point for language education in the UK. A search for 'Team Teaching' has little better success with just three results from the same site. A Google search of all UK educational institutes ending in '.ac.uk' reveals little. It is apparent from the author’s research that CLIL is in little practised in UK Higher Education.

There is a greater reason for optimism on the take up of CLIL in UK Schools with most UK links for CLIL pertaining to school education. One interesting point that often occurs is the possibility of UK Schools attaining a specialist status, with a number of schools being language specialists. This has helped promote new (to the UK) educational practices.

The teaching of study skills and English Culture to overseas students is one area where CLIL appears in UK Higher Education. This is a consequence of the large numbers of overseas students in the UK who want a UK education and who have (sometimes) marginal language skills. A large number of UK Universities run extra classes for these students. These are often combined language and study skill classes.