In the EU, 60% of high school students in general education equip their students with the foundations needed for higher education.
In comparison, this figure is almost 35% among students in vocational education, preparing students for a particular transaction, career or occupation.
English remains the most widely studied language in both forced research (96%) and vocational research (80%).
Germany and France’s leads in vocational education
Among students in general education, Spanish was the second most popular language learned in school (27.1%), followed by German (21.2%), French (20.8%) and Italian (3.2%).
Regarding vocational education students, German ranked second with 18.1%, followed by French (14.1%), Spanish (6.6%), Russian (2.3%) and Swedish (2%).
Chinese people are studied in only 0.5% of students, with the highest percentage of students learning this language found in France (1.4%), Luxembourg (1.1%) and Italy (1%).
Almost all French, Romanian and Czech students film two foreign languages
Some countries seem to be working harder to teach foreign languages than others.
Almost 100% of general education high school students in France, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia and Luxembourg studied two or more foreign languages.
In contrast, Portuguese general education high school students (6.7%), Ireland (10.4%), Spain (22.4%) and Italy (23.3%) were much less likely to study two or more languages.
The situation is different for vocational education students.
Romania is the only country where almost every student in this type of high school education study two or more language classes (97.2%). It then follows Finland (85%) and Poland (78%).
The share of students studying at least two languages is zero or close to zero in Malta (0%), Spain (0.1%), Greece (0.1%), and Denmark (0.9%).
