Close to four fifths (78.9%) of primary school pupils in Luxembourg learn two or more foreign languages, well ahead of the EU average, new data has shown.
On average, just 6.4% of primary school pupils across the European Union learn two or more languages, according to 2023 data from Eurostat. Between 2013 and 2023, this share rose by 1.8 percentage points, up from 4.6%.
Other than Luxembourg, countries including Latvia (37.0%), Greece (35.5%) and Estonia (34.9%) boast relatively high shares of pupils learning two or more foreign languages.
Between 2013 and 2023, some 15 EU countries reported an increase in the number of pupils learning two or more languages, with Latvia seeing the biggest increase over that period, of 22.1 percentage points.
This was followed by Finland with a 15.2 percentage-point increase, Greece with 9.6 points, and Spain with 8.3 points.
Eight EU member states saw declines in multilingual education for pupils, led by Poland (-6.5 percentage points), followed by Luxembourg (-4.9 percentage points). Croatia and Bulgaria were unchanged over the ten-year period.
Secondary level students
The percentage of pupils learning two or more foreign languages is much higher at lower secondary level, the data indicated.
As of 2023, around three fifths (59.5%) of pupils at this level were studying at least two foreign languages, compared with 58.4% in 2013.
Finland reported the highest share, with 97.8% of pupils enrolled in two or more languages, while Greece, Italy, Malta, Estonia, Romania, and Portugal all boasted shares above 93%.
At the other end of the spectrum, just 5.4% of Irish secondary-level students learned two or more foreign languages, followed by Hungary 6.1%, and Austria 7.6%.
Between 2013 and 2023, eleven countries saw growth in the number of secondary-level students learning multiple languages, , led by Czechia with an increase of 24.8 percentage points, while sixteen countries recorded decreases. Read more here.
