04/10/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/10/2024 03:00
In 2022, 60.8% of students in upper secondary general education across the EU studied 2 or more foreign languages as compulsory subjects or as compulsory curriculum options, a mere 0.2 percentage point decrease compared with 2021 (61.0%). In upper secondary vocational education, this share was 33.8%, marking a 1.1 percentage point decrease compared with 2021 (34.9%).
In 9 EU countries, more than 90% of upper secondary general education students studied 2 or more foreign languages. This is the case for nearly all students in upper secondary general education in France (99.7%), Romania and Slovakia (both 98.9%), and Czechia (98.8%).
In contrast, Portugal (7.5%), Ireland (9.4%) and Italy (24%) recorded the lowest shares of students studying 2 or more foreign languages.
Source dataset: educ_uoe_lang02
When it comes to upper secondary vocational education, Romania was the only EU country where almost all students (97.1%) studied 2 or more foreign languages in 2022, followed by Finland (86.1%), Poland (75.9%) and Luxembourg (75.5%).
The lowest shares of students studying 2 or more foreign languages were observed among vocational education students in Malta (0.0%), Spain (0.2%) and Germany and Greece (0.8% each).
In 2022, English was the most studied foreign language in general and vocational education at the upper secondary level in the EU, with 96.3% and 76.3% of students learning it, respectively.
In terms of general education, Spanish ranked second (27.1%), followed by French (21.9%), German (21.4%) and Italian (3.2%). In addition, Russian was the non-EU language most commonly studied in the EU (2.7%).
In vocational education, the German language came in second (17.2%), followed by French (15.2%), Spanish (6.8%) and Russian (2.2%).
Source dataset: educ_uoe_lang01