Statistics Iceland has published data on students in compulsory education and upper secondary schools learning foreign languages during the school year 2007-2008. The data are published for the European Day of Languages, 26 September.
The number of young pupils learning English has doubled
English is the first foreign language taught in compulsory schools and also the most commonly learned foreign language. Most pupils in compulsory schools start learning English in 5th grade and Danish in 7th grade. The number of pupils learning English has increased year by year, and during last school year they were 33,083. That is an increase of 3,353 pupils from the previous year, or 11.3%. Never before have more pupils in compulsory school studied English. The number of pupils learning Danish has decreased with the decreasing number of pupils in the upper grades of compulsory education. Last school year 18,005 pupils in compulsory schools learned Danish. A total of 169 pupils selected Swedish and 100 Norwegian instead of Danish. A few schools start teaching foreign languages earlier than stipulated in the reading plan. More 6, 7, 8 and 9 years old pupils now learn English than ever before. In 2007-2008 the number of students learning English in grades 1-4 of compulsory school more than doubled compared with the previous school year, from 2,989 pupils to 6,225 (figure 1).
Spanish is the most popular third foreign language in compulsory schools
Many compulsory schools in Iceland give pupils the option of selecting a third foreign language. Since the school year 2005-2006 Spanish has become the second most popular third language after German. Last school year most pupils selected Spanish as the third foreign language or 548 pupils, 447 pupils selected German and 307 selected French.
More than 18,000 students at the upper secondary level learn foreign languages
During the school year 2007-2008 there were 18,114 students at the upper secondary level who learned a foreign language, or 72.2% of all pupils at that level. The number of language students has increased by 411 from last year while the proportion of students learning foreign languages has dropped by 0.2 percentage points from the previous school year.
English is the most commonly learnt language at the upper secondary level with 15,154 students. Danish is the second most commonly learnt language with 8,936 students, an increase of 260 students (3.0%) from the previous year. These languages are obligatory in most programmes at the upper secondary level. German is the third most studied language. During the school year 2007-2008 there were 4,536 students learning German, 18.1% of pupils at the upper secondary level. Spanish is next with 3,666 students, 14.6% of all students at the upper secondary level. French is now in fifth place with 2,554 students, or 10.2% of all students at this level. The proportion of students studying German and French has been decreasing while the proportion of students studying Spanish is increasing.
Sixteen foreign languages have been taught in upper secondary schools since 1999
During the school year 2007-2008 students in upper secondary schools studied 11 living languages in addition to Latin, Classic Greek and Icelandic for foreigners. According to the Statistics Iceland database on students in foreign languages 16 languages have been studied by Icelandic students at the upper secondary level since 1999. Figure 2 presents languages which are learned by fewer than 200 students during the school year 2007-2008.
A total of 175 students learned Italian, 85 studied Swedish, 67 Japanese and 46 learned Norwegian. There were 32 students of Russian and 28 students learned Polish. In addition, 332 students studied Icelandic for foreigners.
About the data
Data on compulsory schools are collected once a year for the whole school year. In upper secondary schools data were collected on students in the autumn until the year 2002. Then the data collection was changed and information also gathered on students studying foreign languages in the spring semester. However, the data only include students studying foreign languages in the spring who are registered students in the autumn semester of the same school year. 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