{"id":454075,"date":"2025-09-27T00:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T00:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/454075\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T00:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T00:49:13","slug":"6-4-of-eu-primary-pupils-learn-multiple-languages-news-articles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/454075\/","title":{"rendered":"6.4% of EU primary pupils learn multiple languages – News articles"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2023, 6.4% of primary school<\/a> pupils in the EU<\/a> were learning 2 or more foreign languages. Between 2013 and 2023, this share increased by 1.8 percentage points<\/a> (pp) from 4.6%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Luxembourg was the only EU country where the majority of primary school pupils (78.9%) were learning 2 or more foreign languages. This share was much higher than in the remaining countries. Luxembourg was followed by Latvia (37.0%), Greece (35.5%) and Estonia (34.9%).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Data show that between 2013 and 2023, the shares increased in 15 EU countries, even if modestly. The highest increases were recorded in Latvia (+22.1 pp), Finland (+15.2 pp), Greece (+9.6 pp) and Spain (+8.3 pp).\u00a0<\/p>\n

In contrast, in 8 EU countries the shares declined, most significantly in Poland (-6.5 pp) and Luxembourg (-4.9 pp). Additionally, in Croatia (18.4%) and Bulgaria (1.5%), the share remained unchanged in the same period.<\/p>\n

\"Pupils<\/a><\/p>\n

Source dataset: educ_uoe_lang02<\/a><\/p>\n

60% of EU lower secondary pupils are studying 2 or more languages<\/p>\n

At the lower secondary level, in 2023, 59.5% of pupils were learning 2 or more foreign languages. Compared with 2013, this share rose from 58.4%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finland had the highest share among the EU countries with 97.8% of the pupils. Greece, Italy, Malta, Estonia, Romania, and Portugal also registered high shares varying between 96.6% and 93.2%. The lowest shares were observed in Ireland (5.4%), Hungary (6.1%) and Austria (7.6%)<\/p>\n

Compared with 2013, the share of lower secondary level pupils learning 2 or more foreign languages increased in 11 EU countries, with Czechia (+24.8 pp), France (+22.0 pp) and Belgium (+18.2 pp) registering the highest increases. On the other hand, in 16 EU countries, the share of lower secondary pupils learning at least 2 foreign languages went down, with decreases varying between -42.8 pp in Poland, -33.0 pp in Slovenia and -26.0 pp in Slovakia, and -0.5 pp in Finland, -0.8 pp in Estonia and -1.0 pp in Romania.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pupils<\/a><\/p>\n

Source dataset: educ_uoe_lang02<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This news article marks the European Day of Languages<\/a>, under the theme \u2018languages open hearts and minds!\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2023, 6.4% of primary school pupils in the EU were learning 2 or more foreign languages. Between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[64410,129158,2000,299,5187,64411],"class_list":{"0":"post-454075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-data-driven-news","9":"tag-edc","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-population-and-social-conditions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115273516464097597","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}