UK pupils learn fewer languages than any others in Europe
A couple of weeks ago the Telegraph reported on Department of Education figures showing that pupils in UK schools who spoke English as a second language were outperforming those who were native speakers.
One comment from Baroness Coussins stood out. She said that the “presence in schools of children who are bilingual or have English as an additional language tends, in fact, to raise overall school performance at GCSE, not damage it”.
So on the back of the Department for Education's figures it would seem that learning foreign languages will improve general academic performance as well as bringing with it the traditional benefits of being multi-lingual.
But how does the UK compare to other European countries for teaching foreign languages to its students?
The chart above shows rankings based on statistics from Eurostat for the number of languages learned by pupils in different European countries in two different age categories.
ISCED2 equates to lower secondary school level (i.e. years 7-9) and ISCED3 equates to upper secondary level (i.e. years 10 and 11).
In both categories the UK comes last.
The average number of languages learned by pupils in the ISCED2 category is 1 compared with the average of 2.5 languages learned by pupils of the same age group in Luxembourg and 2.1 by pupils in the Netherlands.
It's a similar story for ISCED3 where the average number of languages learned by pupils in the UK is 0.6 compared with countries such as Estonia and Romania where the average number of languages learned is 2.
This means that 40% of pupils in the UK do not take a foreign language for their GCSEs.
You can explore the data further in the map below. The blue line in the graph which appears in the info window represents the EU average.
Foreign languages are not compulsory for pupils at GCSE level but maybe they should be.
Happily, though, the Independent reported last year on a rise in the uptake of foreign language GCSEs so things might be headed in a better direction for the UK.
A brief note on the stats
Most of these figures are taken from the year 2012. Where there was no figure for 2012 the figure from 2011 was used instead. This was the case for the UK, Italy, Spain and Sweden.
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