Slow death of foreign languages as schools drop French and German

FOREIGN language A-levels are being dropped by sixth form colleges because not enough people want to study them.

Applications to study degrees in European languages have also fallen by about a quarter since 2011.

One in five colleges stopped teaching German over the past year, while 12 per cent dropped French and Spanish. Half blamed a lack of demand from students, a survey by the Association of Colleges and the Times Educational Supplement found.

The numbers of entries for French and German A-levels dropped by more than a quarter between 2011 and 2016. There was also a decline in those seeking to study the subjects at GSCE over the past five years. However, there have been modest increases in students taking Arabic, Chinese and Italian at A-level and GSCE – although overall numbers remain small.

As well as a decline in European languages, applications for degrees in other modern dialects have dropped by almost a fifth, a separate analysis of UCAS data by the Press Association found.

Vicky Gough, schools adviser at the British Council, said: ‘If the UK is to remain internationally competitive – particularly as we prepare to leave the EU – we need far more young people, not fewer, to be learning languages in schools and beyond.’

The figures come just weeks before teenagers across the country receive their Alevel and GCSE results.

The Government has encouraged schools to get more pupils to learn languages as part of their studies, but change has been slow to take hold as they are seen as difficult subjects to achieve high scores in.

A Department for Education spokesman said it was working to reverse the ‘historic decline’ in the study of foreign languages by making it mandatory in primary schools and part of the English Baccalaureate.