The proportion of pupils entered for a language has fallen every year since 2019. And we are likely to see another small fall this year.
Provisional data on entries suggests that, while entries to languages are likely to have increased this year, they will have increased by less than the increase in the overall population of 16 year olds.
So, despite strong increases in entries in belarus rcs data Spanish and other modern languages, we can probably expect to see the proportion of pupils entering languages fall again this year.
grading that we mentioned earlier on is up for debate – the shortage of languages teachers is another big block. And according to DfE figures, recruitment of new teachers is not looking promising: just 33% of the target number of new modern languages teachers were recruited this year. Only a handful of subjects, including physics and music, were further away from their teacher recruitment target.[1]
And it may well be that, with a new government in place, we’ll see some changes to the EBacc. The inclusion of an arts pillar is one possibility, as part of Labour’s plans to increase access to the arts.
A boost in entries for statistics, engineering and classics
According to provisional entry figures, the subjects expecting the biggest boost in entry numbers this year are statistics, engineering and classical studies.