Statistics Iceland has published data on students in compulsory education and in upper secondary schools learning foreign languages. The data are published on the European Day of Languages, September 26th, and refer mainly to pupils during the school years 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. Older data are used for comparison.

English is the most commonly learned language in compulsory schools
After changes in the reading plan for compulsory education in 1999 English has become the first foreign language taught in compulsory schools and also the most commonly learned language. Most pupils in compulsory schools start learning English in 5. grade and Danish in 7. grade. The number of pupils learning English has increased year by year and during the school year 2004-2005 there were more than 28 thousand (28,108) pupils learning English. The number of pupils learning Danish has also increased and now more than 18 thousand (18,159) pupils in compulsory schools learn Danish. A total of 190 pupils learned Swedish and 135 Norwegian instead of Danish in 2004-2005. The number of pupils learning Swedish has decreased while the number of pupils learning Norwegian has increased when compared to data for previous years.

A few schools start teaching foreign languages earlier than stipulated in the reading plan. More than 500 (506) pupils in 1.-3. grade in compulsory schools learned English during the school year 2004-2005, and 435 pupils in 4. grade, double the number for the previous year.

Fewer pupils in compulsory schools select a third foreign language
Many compulsory schools give pupils the option of selecting a third foreign language. Fewer pupils have been selecting a third foreign language than in 2001-2002. German has been selected by the largest number of pupils (724 during the school year 2004-2005), then French (293) and Spanish (136). During the school year 2004-2005 the number of pupils studying these languages decreased by a total of 322 pupils since the school year 2003-2004. The greatest reduction is found in German, 221 pupils (23.4%) but the proportional reduction in the number learning Spanish is only a little smaller (22.7%).

74% of pupils at the upper secondary level learn foreign languages
During the school year 2003-2004 there were 16,195 students at the upper secondary level who learned a foreign language, or 73.9% of all pupils at that level. A year later, in 2004-2005, there are 16,522 students learning a foreign language or 73.0% of all pupils at the upper secondary level. The number of students learning foreign languages has increased by 327 between these school years while the proportion of students learning a foreign language has decreased by almost one percentage point.

Fewer students learn a foreign language than in 1999
In the autumn semester 1999 70.3% of students at the upper secondary level learned foreign languages while in autumn 2004 the proportion is down to 67.5%, a reduction of 2.8 percentage points. Between 1999 and 2002 data was only collected on students learning a foreign language during the autumn semester which is why comparisons with those years should only be undertaken using data on pupils in the autumn semester. Figure 2 depicts the proportion of students at the upper secondary level who learn a foreign language in the autumn semester and additionally shows the proportion of all students learning foreign languages in 2003-2005, i.e. including students in the spring semester.

Girls tend to be more numerous than boys among students learning foreign languages. During the school year 2004-2005 74.7% of girls at the upper secondary level learned foreign languages while the corresponding figure for boys was 71.3%. The situation was similar in the previous year when 76.3% of girls and 71.4% of boys at the upper secondary level learned foreign languages. The difference between the sexes is 3.4 and 4.9 percentage points. However, this difference is smaller than at times in the past. In 1999 the difference between girls and boys was 6.9 percentage points and 8.1 percentage points in the year 2000.

Fewer students learn German at the upper secondary level
English is the most commonly learned language at the upper secondary level with more than 14 thousand (14,128) students in the school year 2004-2005. Danish is the second most commonly learned language with more than 8 thousand (8.456) students studying Danish that year. These languages are obligatory in most programmes at the upper secondary level.

German is the third most studied language. During the school year 2004-2005 there were almost 5 thousand (4.936) students learning German; 21.8% of pupils at the upper secondary level. French is next with 2,582 students; 11.4% of all students. The number of students learning German and French has decreased proportionally since the autumn 1999 when 26.7% of students at the upper secondary level learned German and 12.5% learned French. More students are learning Spanish and in the school year 2004-2005 2,428 students learned Spanish; 10.7% of upper secondary students. That is more than twice the number in the autumn 1999, when 4.4% of students at the upper secondary level learned Spanish.

About the data
Data on compulsory schools are collected once a year, in the spring, for the whole school year. In upper secondary schools data were collected in the autumn until the year 2002 when the data collection was changed and information collected both from schools and from the central database of the upper secondary schools, INNA. Older data only refer to students in the autumn semester but after 2002 the coverage of the data collection was increased and information also gathered on students studying foreign languages in the spring semester. Information is only collected on living foreign languages. Students in Latin, classical Greek and Esperanto are therefore not included.

Statistics
  Compulsory schools
  Upper secondary schools