Filenews 29 September 2021
Among the European Union countries with the lowest percentages of students in upper secondary general education who learned two or more foreign languages was Cyprus in 2019 (with 38%), compared to the European average of 59%, according to data released by Eurostat, the EU's statistical office.
Nevertheless, Cyprus was higher than Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Greece.
The average is relatively high in Europe as all students in Luxembourg and France taught at least two foreign languages, while the rate was 99% in Estonia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Finland. 98% in Slovakia, 95% in Croatia and 92% in Slovenia.
The countries with the lowest rates were Greece (1%), Portugal (6%) and Ireland (12%), followed immediately before Cyprus by Italy (25%) and Spain (27%).
Eurostat notes in its communication that the data relate to foreign languages that are compulsory courses, or part of a forced set of courses, and do not include the additional elective courses. It should also be noted that, although in Luxembourg the official languages are Luxembourgish, French and German, for statistical analysis French and German are considered to be foreign languages.
English was most often taught as a foreign language at the upper secondary level of general education in 2019, as on average in the EU 96% of pupils attended English courses.
They were followed by Spanish with 26%, French with 22%, German with 20% and Italian with 3%.
Russian was the most popular non-EU language taught in the EU, with 3%, especially in Estonia (68% of upper secondary school students), Latvia (57%), Lithuania (30%) and Bulgaria (24%).
In Cyprus, the first foreign language in upper secondary education was English (100%), followed by French (28%), Russian (6%), Spanish (4%), Italian (2%) and German (1%).
CNA
