Statistics Iceland has published data on students in compulsory education and upper secondary schools learning foreign languages during the school year 2010-2011. The data are published for the European Day of Languages, September 26th.

Among other things the data show that never before has the number of pupils in compulsory schools learning English been greater, at 78.9%. On average, students in upper secondary schools learn 1.41 languages during the 2010-2011 school year. That year there were students learning Chinese both in compulsory schools and upper secondary schools in Iceland.

More pupils in compulsory schools learn English
English is the first foreign language taught in compulsory schools and also the most commonly learned language. During the school year 2010-2011 33,558 pupils learned English in compulsory schools, or 78.9%. That rate has never been higher since Statistics Iceland started publishing data on pupils studying foreign languages in 1999. The number of schools where pupils start learning foreign languages before what is stipulated in the reading plan is increasing. Last school year 7,803 pupils in grades 1-4 learned English or 47.0% of pupils in these grades (6-9 years old). Five years ago, during the 2005-2006 school year, 1,576 pupils in these grades learned English, or 9.3%.

Fewer pupils in compulsory schools learn Norwegian or Swedish instead of Danish
Most pupils start learning Danish in grade 7, at the age of 12. In many schools pupils who know Norwegian or Swedish can select those languages instead of Danish. Last school year a total of 101 pupils selected Swedish rather than Danish and 78 pupils learned Norwegian, the smallest number since the start of the data collection in 1999.

Fewer pupils in compulsory schools learn three foreign languages, but Chinese taught for the first time
The number of pupils in compulsory schools learning three foreign languages has decreased since their number was greatest during the school year 2001-2002, when 1,656 (3.8%) pupils learned three languages.  Last school year 720 pupils learned three languages or 1.7%. The third foreign language is usually taught as an elective in Icelandic compulsory schools.

Last school year 463 pupils in compulsory education learned Spanish, 179 pupils German, 174 pupils French and 23 pupils learned Chinese. Chinese has not been taught before at the compulsory level in Iceland since the start of the Statistics Iceland data colletion.

Almost 19,000 students at the upper secondary level learn foreign languages
During the school year 2010-2011 there were 18,520 students at the upper secondary level who learned a foreign language, or 73.7% of all pupils at that level. This is a similar proportion of students as last year (73.4%).

Icelandic students learn Chinese and Japanese in upper secondary schools
An increasing number of students in Icelandic upper secondary schools are learning languages that have been rare in the Icelandic school system. For the first time since the start of the data collection by Statistics Iceland in 1999 Icelandic upper secondary students learn Chinese, which was studied by 18 students last school year. The number of students of Japanese has increased considerably. There were 147 students learning Japanese in 2010-2011 but 114 in the previous year. In addition, 29 students learned Russian but 11 the previous year. There were 368 students learning Icelandic as a foreign language in upper secondary schools, a decrease of 47 from 2009-2010.

English is the most commonly learned language at the upper secondary level with 15,454 students, who are 61.5% of students at the upper secondary level. Danish is the second most commonly learned language with 8,268 students; 32.9% of students at this level. These two languages are compulsory for most students at the upper secondary level. German is the third most studied language. During the school year 2010-2011 there were 4,504 students learning German; 17.9% of students at the upper secondary level. Spanish is in fourth place with 4,153 students; 16.5% of all students at the upper secondary level. French is in fifth place with 2,289 students, or 9.1% of all students at this level.

More females than males learn foreign languages in upper secondary schools
More females than males study foreign languages in upper secondary schools. A total of 73.8% of female and 73.5% of male students in upper secondary schools study a foreign language. The proportion of males and females is almost equal among students of the compulsory languages, i.e. English and Danish. Females outnumber males learning other languages except for German.

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 semester 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