Fears over 10% drop in pupils taking foreign language exam

Exam boards today launched an urgent inquiry after a huge drop in the number of students taking language A-levels.

Figures published today reveal modern foreign languages are becoming increasingly unpopular among teenagers. Entries for French fell by 10 per cent and German was down 11 per cent. The subjects have seen entries fall by almost 18 per cent since 2008.

The three main exam bodies pledged to work together to investigate why so few students are choosing the subjects. Research teams will spend six months trying to find a reason for the drop, analysing which students opt for languages and whether GCSE choices have a bearing on A-level choices.

Spanish A-level bucked the trend with a 4.1 per cent rise in the number of entries. But experts warned that the overall drop in modern foreign languages was extremely worrying.

Andrew Hall, from AQA, said: “Enough is enough. We are concerned about languages.”

He said the exam boards would “let the technical teams rip” by analysing all the data they have about language exams to try to find a solution.

Some students believe it is harder to get top marks in A-level languages, and this could be nudging them towards other subjects. Today’s results show only 6.9 per cent of French, German and Spanish A-levels were awarded A*s, compared with 8.4 per cent of science exams.

But when A grades are taken into account the outcomes are flipped, with 38.2 per cent of language A-levels graded at either A or A* compared with 30.7 per cent of science exams.

Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We are very pleased about the decision to investigate modern languages. We have been concerned for many years about the relative difficulty of modern foreign languages. There is a real need for us to have linguists. We must make it comparable to other subjects.”

He added: “ASCL has been saying for years that there is an issue with grading of modern language exams. Students know that it is harder to get a high grade in languages and undoubtedly this has been factored to a certain extent into their choice of subjects.

“In the job market the ability to speak more than one language makes British graduates more competitive and businesses need to send out this message loud and clear. Students are savvy to what employers want and if they hear businesses say that graduates who can speak more than one language are in demand they will respond.”