The number of German students going abroad for language study decreased by 1.44% last year, according to agency association FDSV. The downturn was led by a significant decrease in 14-17 year olds from 53.22% in 2013 to 41.63% of the total number of students.
Despite the overall decrease, however, agents report increases in all other ages groups, particularly a surge in 18-30 year olds, which accounted for 23% of market share compared with 17% in 2013. The yearly statistics report also shows a growing interest in destinations further from home.
“Some parents don’t want to send their children abroad for a high school year”
Julia Richter, managing director of FDSV, said the decrease in the 14-17 demographic is likely due to new secondary school scheduling.
“Now we have eight years high school and it’s more or less packed with lessons in these eight years instead of nine,” she told The PIE News.
“Some parents don’t want to send their children abroad for a high school year in between these eight years, because it’s such a tough weekly or monthly plan in school that they miss so much if they go abroad for half a year or longer.”
“So some of them send them in to a short term course and then after finishing school they put them into different programmes: volunteering programmes, work and travel, language programmes combined with travelling, these types of courses.”
FDSV, which has 28 members, produced the statistics based on feedback from 26 agencies, who sent a total of 46,358 language students abroad.
It shows the 6-13 age cohort saw a rise of 1.85% to 17.28% last year, with students aged 31-49 also increasing by 2.56%.
Overview of the ages of German students studying languages abroad
Another rise denoted that 6.05% of the students were over 50 years old, an increase of 1.25% from the year before.
“Going abroad for a language course is something you can do for your whole life,” commented Richter.
“We have a variety of older students attending business courses or normal 18+ courses. There are other elderly people looking for a standard 20-lesson course a week mixed with younger and older people, so it really depends on the individual’s needs and interests.”
The statistics also show an emerging trend of demand for destinations further from home.
Students stayed longer in English-speaking destinations as far away as Australia and New Zealand, which boasted the longest average stays in weeks: 4.34 and 5.19 respectively.
The average length of stay in the UK decreased from 2.01 weeks to 1.89 weeks, and from 4.8 weeks to 3.7 weeks in the US.
“The UK remained substantially the most popular study destination overall with 53.50% of the market share”
Despite the number of English language bookings decreasing from 85.63% in 2013 to 83.64% in 2014, the UK remained substantially the most popular study destination overall, with 53.50% of the market share.
Malta was the second most-popular, attracting 14.65% of students, followed by the US with 5.40%.
Spanish, the second most requested language, with 5.81% of market share, also demonstrated a slight shift in destination demand. Spain accounted for 4.18% while South America as a destination increased to 1.7% of the market share.
“If you have more time to spend, for example, why don’t you go to South America instead of Spain,” said Richter.
“Spain is somewhere you can go for a week or a two week trip, or for a couple of days. It’s definitely something we try to push a little bit, to think about longer destinations like South America for example.”
