Arabic is one of the world’s great languages. Spoken by more than 400 million people, it has been the vehicle of many significant contributions to the development of science and culture, from the earliest odes of the pre-Islamic poets through to the cutting-edge research of the philosophers and mathematicians of Islam’s golden age, to the novels of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz.
Arabic is also one of the official languages of the United Nations and was recently identified as one of the ten most important languages for the UK’s future.

Source: Why Arabic should be taught in UK schools | British Council