Upper secondary education: 60% study 2 or more languages

In 2023, 60.0% of students in upper secondary general education across the EU studied 2 or more foreign languages as compulsory subjects or as compulsory curriculum options. This was a 0.8 percentage points (pp) decrease compared with 2022 (60.8%). In upper secondary vocational education, this share was 34.8%, marking a 1.0 pp increase compared with 2022 (33.8%). In 9 EU countries, more than 90% of upper secondary general education students studied 2 or more foreign languages. The highest shares were registered in France (99.8%), Romania (99.1%) and Czechia (98.5%). By contrast, Portugal (6.7%), Ireland (10.4%) and Spain (22.4%) recorded the lowest shares of students studying 2 or more foreign languages. Source dataset: educ_uoe_lang02 Regarding upper secondary vocational education, Romania was the only EU country where almost all students (97.2%) studied 2 or more foreign languages in 2023, followed by Finland (85.0%) and Poland (78.0%). The lowest shares of students studying 2 or more foreign languages were observed among vocational education students in Malta (0.0%), Spain and Greece (both 0.1%). English tops foreign language in upper secondary education In 2023, English was the most studied foreign language in general and vocational education at the upper secondary level in the EU, with 96.0% and 80.1% of students learning it, respectively. In terms of general education, Spanish ranked second (27.1%), followed by German (21.2%), French (20.8%) and Italian (3.2%). In vocational education, the German language came in second (18.1%), followed by French (14.1%), Spanish (6.6%) and Russian (2.3%). Source dataset: educ_uoe_lang01