In the EU, 60% of high school students in general education—which equips pupils with the foundation needed for higher education—study two or more foreign languages as part of their compulsory studies.
By comparison, this figure was almost 35% among students in vocational education, which prepares students for specific trades, careers, or professions.
English remains, by far, the most widely studied language among both compulsory (96%) and vocational studies (80%).
German and French lead in vocational education
Among general education pupils, Spanish was the second most popular language to learn at school (27.1%), followed by German (21.2%), French (20.8%) and Italian (3.2%).
When it comes to students in vocational education, German takes second place with 18.1%, followed by French (14.1%), Spanish (6.6%), Russian (2.3%) and Swedish (2%).
Chinese is only studied by 0.5% of students, with the highest percentages of pupils learning this language found in France (1.4%), Luxembourg (1.1%) and Italy (1%).
Almost all French, Romanian and Czech students take two foreign languages
Some countries seem to be putting more effort into teaching foreign languages than others.
Nearly 100% of high school students in general education in France, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, and Luxembourg studied two or more foreign languages.
By contrast, high school students in general education in Portugal (6.7%), Ireland (10.4%), Spain (22.4%) and Italy (23.3%) were much less likely to study two or more languages.
The situation differs when it comes to pupils in vocational education.
Romania is the only country where nearly all pupils in this type of high school education study two or more language classes (97.2%). It is followed by Finland (85%) and Poland (78%).
The share of students studying at least two languages is zero or close to zero in Malta (0%), Spain (0.1%), Greece (0.1%), and Denmark (0.9%).
