Luxembourg was the only country to have all secondary school pupils learning at least two foreign languages (French and German), but Finland, Romania, Slovakia, and France all reached 99%.

Norway saw the biggest drop in students learning two or more foreign languages, from 100% in 2009 to 35% in 2014

Norway saw the biggest drop, with the number of students learning two or more foreign languages plummeting from 100% in 2009 to just 35% in 2014.

Elsewhere, Estonia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Croatia all boasted more than 90% of pupils learning two foreign languages.

France observed a particularly notable increase in the proportion of secondary school students learning two or more languages between 2009 and 2014, up from 90.6% to 98.6%.

The increase coincides with a concerted push by the French government to improve foreign language skills in recent years, which includes a drive to increase the number of schools teaching two foreign languages from a younger age, and the launch of a website to help French children, teenagers and adults learn English.

In contrast, Denmark, Malta and Sweden all saw a fall of more than 10% in the number of secondary school students studying more than one foreign language.

Nathalie Vandystadt, European Commission Spokesperson for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, commented that the Eurostat report “confirms that European schools are continuing to step up the teaching of foreign languages”, in line with a call by the Barcelona Council of 2002 to “to improve the mastery of basic skills, in particular by teaching at least two foreign languages from a very early age” in the EU.

The report “confirms that European schools are continuing to step up the teaching of foreign languages”

“The Commission welcomes the finding that 60% of pupils study two foreign languages or more, and encourages member states to further support foreign language education in order to reach the goal of teaching children two foreign languages from an early stage,” she added.

In the most recent Europe-wide survey on foreign language learning, 88% of Europeans surveyed said they felt languages other than their mother tongue are useful for personal development. Two thirds of Europeans (67%) said they considered English one of the two most useful foreign languages to learn. German (17%) and French (16%) followed, mirroring the most popular second foreign languages in this year’s survey.

Language learning at EU primary schools. Image: Eurostat.

Looking at the primary school level, more than three-quarters of students learned English in 2014, led by Malta, Cyprus and Austria at 100%.

A smaller proportion learned French (12.5%) or German (4.5%) as a foreign language.

Luxembourg (84%) and the UK (70%) were the only EU states had the most primary school children learning French by some margin, with Greece trailing on 16.1%.

And 100% of primary school children in Luxembourg also learned German, the proportion of primary aged learners reached no higher than 20% (in Croatia and Hungary) elsewhere.