collagePlease take the time to read the article carefully. It will give students planning to study in Europe a better idea about languages taught in European schools work.
Keep reading for more information about foreign languages taught in UK schools, countries that require learning a second language, what languages are taught in American schools, when did schools start teaching foreign languages, foreign language education in France, foreign languages taught in Indian schools, foreign language in high school statistics, what languages are taught in french schools on Collegelearners.
Unfortunately, for some reason, there is no value available for the United Kingdom in the data provided by Eurostat. As you can see, the differences are huge. Children in Luxembourg learn 2.5 foreign languages on average (i.e. 3.5 languages overall) in compulsory education, whereas children in Hungary learn just 1 foreign language, the lowest rate in Europe. Considering that Hungarian is not mutually intelligible with any other European language, this is a very worrying trend for Hungary.
It should be noted that the figure for Ireland provided by Eurostat does not represent its linguistic situation very well. Irish is not considered a foreign language in the statistics for Ireland (presumably because it is not a national language of any foreign country) but it is usually a compulsory subject in Irish secondary schools. The real average number of languages studied there is, therefore, closer to 2, but the fact still remains that Irish children learn only 1 non-native language useful in international communication.
The next-most studied languages in European schools are French, German and Spanish, each garnering no more than 15% of students participating in 2017. Russian, studied in a formal classroom by 2% of Europeans, is the only other foreign language that more than 1% of European students learn.
Luxembourg is still at the top, with 3.0 languages studied per pupil on average. Hungary is, by far, no longer at the bottom. The sad title goes to the United Kingdom, with just 0.6 languages studied per pupil (which means that a large number of British pupils do not study any foreign language at all).
There are some surprising differences between the two maps. The figures tend to be relatively similar in most cases, but there is a significant drop in the case of Italy and Portugal and a large increase in the case of Belgium. The situation in Portugal is especially worrying, as it is the only non-English-speaking EU country where less than 1 foreign language per pupil is studied at this level.
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