IRISH PRIMARY schools have the lowest level of foreign language tuition in Europe and tuition levels in secondary schools have declined since the start of the century, new EU research shows.
Although “significantly” more primary school pupils were learning a foreign language in 2008 than in 2000, the research reports only a tiny increase in Ireland.
All Irish primary pupils receive tuition in Irish, but this is not reflected in the figures, as Irish is not a foreign language.
Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Commission, reports that 3 per cent of Irish primary school pupils learned French in 2008, while 1 per cent learned Spanish.
The increasing tuition rate elsewhere in Europe is “due to the fact that, over the years, studying at least one foreign language at primary school level has become compulsory in every European country with the sole exception of Ireland”.
The low Irish rate of foreign language tuition at primary level contrasts with English language tuition rates as high as 99 per cent in Italy and 98 per cent in Spain. The research also reports “significant” increases in countries like Greece, Bulgaria, Germany and Britain.
On average, 79 per cent of European primary school pupils learn a foreign language and 10 per cent receive tuition in a second foreign language.
While Irish pupils have English as their first language, the research says English is the “only language learned at primary level except in a very few countries.” At lower secondary level in Ireland, 66 per cent of students learn French and 21 per cent learn German. At upper secondary level the rates vary between 58 per cent and 66 per cent learning French, while 17 per cent learn German.
Only Hungary had a lower tuition rate for the first foreign language at lower secondary level and many countries had a tuition rate of 100 per cent.
The research suggests primary school pupils are starting to learn foreign languages earlier, while the number of years for which foreign languages are compulsory at second level is decreasing.
More than a third of European adults aged 25 to 64 said they did not know any foreign language, but this did not include any figures for Ireland. Similarly, the finding that “a slightly smaller proportion” of adults saying they knew one foreign language did not include Irish data.
“The best known foreign language by far is perceived to be English, followed by German, Russian, French and Spanish,” said Eurostat. “A higher proportion of the younger adult population claim to speak foreign languages than of the older generations, except in some eastern-European member states.”