More than 95% of Romania’s lower secondary school pupils studied at least two foreign languages in 2014, the figure being higher than the European Union’s average of around 60%, according to Eurostat data.

Luxembourg was the only country in Europe where all secondary school pupils learned two foreign languages in 2014, followed by Finland (98.5%), Italy (98.4%), Estonia (96.3%), and Romania (95.6%). In contrast, fewer than 10% of all pupils were studying two or more languages in Hungary (6.3%), Ireland (7.9%) and Austria (9.5%).

English was the main foreign language studied during lower secondary education in Romania, and all over Europe. Some 99.4% of the 790,300 pupils in Romania studied this language in 2014, compared to an EU average of 97.3%.

About 84.6% of all Romanian pupils also studied French, the fifth highest share in the EU. French is the second most studied language in the EU at a secondary school level, with over a third of all EU pupils learning the language.

Romania ranked sixth in the EU on the number of lower secondary school pupils, with 790,000. The statistics don’t include the UK.

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Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com