Spanish athletes at the 2024 Olympics (Image: Getty)
PARLEZ-vous fran？ais? For a growing number of British children the answer is “non”, as youngsters ditch French to study Spanish instead.
French has traditionally been the modern foreign language taught in British schools but when GCSE students receive their results this week the number boasting a French and a Spanish qualification will be roughly equal.
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And next year, Spanish GCSEs are set to overtake those in French for the first time.
Experts say this is good news, as while French remains one of the world’s most important languages, spoken by 321 million people, Spanish is seen as the most valuable language British people can learn.
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A study by the British Council ranked it first place for languages “which will be of crucial importance for the UK’s future prosperity, security and influence in the world”. Second was Mandarin, which is the most widely-spoken tongue worldwide, while French was third.
Mexico is expected to become the world’s seventh-largest economy by 2050 and is seen as a potentially huge export market for the UK along with Chile and Colombia. The three Spanish-speaking countries have a combined population of more than 185 million people, but a relatively small proportion can speak English.
In addition, Spain is the most popular travel destination for British holidaymakers, with 17.8 million trips made in 2023.
Spanish overtook German as the second most popular language taught in schools in 2008 and it is now almost as popular as French, with 129,940 GCSE Spanish grades due to be awarded next week compared to 130,650 grades in French.
It means the number of students taking Spanish has risen by 22 percent since 2020 and on current trends, Spain is set to become the most popular language in GCSE results next year.
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Vicky Gough, British Council Schools Adviser, said: “As well as having numerous benefits for the individual, language learning is beneficial to the UK because it helps us to overcome trade barriers and foster international business and diplomatic relations. Research suggests what’s invested in Spanish, alongside French, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese specifically, could return double for the economy.
“Our Language Trends data indicates Spanish is on course to overtake French at GCSE level and this is partly due to its perceived ‘usefulness’ – it’s spoken in a lot of countries, Spanish has a lot of visibility in pop culture and media, and Spain is a popular tourist destination for British people.
"The rise in popularity of Spanish is encouraging but it’s important that we also promote other languages as well."
The number of A-level students taking a modern language had risen, she said.
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"Already it’s been encouraging to see that at A-level, entries for modern foreign languages across the board have increased after seeing some of the biggest drops last year.
"In order for this rise to continue, we also need to see more students taking languages at GCSE."