Almost all Romanian secondary school pupils study two foreign languages

More than 95% of Romania’s lower secondary school pupils studied at least two foreign languages in 2014, the figure being higher than the European Union’s average of around 60%, according to Eurostat data. Luxembourg was the only country in Europe where all secondary school pupils learned two foreign languages in 2014, followed by Finland (98.5%), Italy (98.4%), Estonia (96.3%), and Romania (95.6%). In contrast, fewer than 10% of all pupils were studying two or more languages in Hungary (6.3%), Ireland (7.9%) and Austria (9.5%). English was the main foreign language studied during lower secondary education in Romania, and all over Europe. Some 99.4% of the 790,300 pupils in Romania studied this language in 2014, compared to an EU average of 97.3%. About 84.6% of all Romanian pupils also studied French, the fifth highest share in the EU. French is the second most studied language in the EU at a secondary school level, with over a third of all EU pupils learning the language. Romania ranked sixth in the EU on the number of lower secondary school pupils, with 790,000. The statistics don’t include the UK. Comment: Language specialists are vital to the Romanian economy Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com