OREANDA-NEWS. Learning a foreign language at school is very common in the European Union (EU), with around 18 million lower secondary school pupils (or 98.6% of all pupils at this level) studying at least one foreign language in 2014. Among them, nearly 11 million (59.9%) were studying two foreign languages or more.

English was by far the most popular language at lower secondary level, studied by more than 17 million pupils (97.3%). French (5 million or 33.7%) came second, followed by German (3 million or 23.1%) and Spanish (2 million or 13.1%).

These data come from a report issued by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Currently there are 24 official languages recognised within the EU. In addition there are regional languages, minority languages, and languages spoken by migrant populations. It should also be noted that several EU Member States have more than one official language.

Luxembourg, Finland and Italy on top for learning several foreign languages

In 2014, all or nearly all lower secondary school pupils learnt at least two foreign languages in Luxembourg (100%), Finland (98.5%), Italy (98.4%), Estonia (96.3%) and Romania (95.6%). In contrast, fewer than 10% of pupils were studying two or more languages in Hungary (6.3%), Ireland (7.9%) and Austria (9.5%).

English, French and German: top 3 foreign languages studied in the EU

English is by far the main foreign language studied during lower secondary education in the vast majority of Member States. In particular, all pupils attend English classes in Denmark, Spain, Italy, Malta and Sweden.

French is one of the two main foreign languages studied in Luxembourg and is also the top foreign language studied in Ireland (by 60.0% of pupils) and Belgium (51.9%). In addition, French is the second most popular foreign language studied at lower secondary level in seven Member States, with the highest shares of learners recorded in Cyprus (88.1%), Romania (84.6%), Italy (67.7%) and Portugal (64.7%).

Besides being studied by all pupils in Luxembourg, German ranks second in eight Member States, with the highest shares being registered in Denmark (73.6%), Poland (69.0%) and Slovakia (55.2%). Learning Spanish is notably popular in France (37.8%) and Sweden (43.9%), while Russian, the only commonly studied non-EU language, came second in the three Baltic States – Lithuania (66.7%), Estonia (64.7%) and Latvia (60.4%) – as well as in Bulgaria (17.9%).