Language Trends Northern Ireland 2023
The Language Trends Northern Ireland report surveyed surveyed over 50 per cent of post-primaries, 10.5 per cent of primary schools and over 1,150 Year 9 pupils to learn more about language provision in Northern Ireland. It follows on from research in 2021, which found that language lessons were ‘hardest hit’ during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Headline statistics from the report include:
- Decline in language learning has plateaued at post-primary – with Spanish now the most popular language at both A-level and GCSE
- Irish has replaced French as the second most popular language at A-level
- Language teaching in primary schools is recovering following the Covid-19 pandemic
- Most pupils do not see languages being part of their future career, with just 14.2 per cent of those surveyed expressing any likelihood of using languages in the future
- The gap in language uptake continues to widen between grammar schools and secondary schools
- Almost one in five (19%) of Year 9 pupils would like to learn Italian at school
About Language Trends Northern Ireland 2023
Language Trends, which surveys schools anonymously on their languages provision, has run in England since 2003 and in Wales since 2015, but this is just the third time that the British Council has conducted research in Northern Ireland.
This year, British Council Northern Ireland contracted the Northern Ireland Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (NICILT), based at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), to conduct the second biennial Language Trends Northern Ireland survey report.
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