How Spanish is the only foreign language growing in popularity in English schools

Spanish lessons are booming in schools across England despite the general decline of modern foreign languages taught in classes.

While children learning French or German has dramatically declined from the previous two decades, pupils learning Spanish at GCSE level has increased from 29,000 to 85,000 between 1995 and 2015. Students taking Spanish A-level has also risen from 4,095 in 1996 to 7,608 in 2015, according to a recent House of Commons Library research paper on language teaching in English schools written by Robert Long and Paul Bolton.

That means in the last 20 years, Spanish language take-up has risen from five per cent of pupils to 14 per cent.  In the academic year beginning in 2010, Spanish overtook German as the second largest language at GCSE level.

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