Following on from our 2017 comprehensive blog posting on the growing popularity of Spanish as a secondary school subject compared to other languages, we are going to have a look at the 2018 figures that the Department of Education has released. All our data has been taken from the State Examinations Commission website, under the “State Examinations Statistics” part of their website:
https://www.examinations.ie/?l=en&mc=st&sc=r12
In 2018 54440 students sat the Leaving Certificate. Of these, 13% (7,027 students) took a Spanish paper (either higher or ordinary level). This compares with 43.5% (23,710 students) who did French in the exam. While 3 times as many students took French as took Spanish, the number continues to narrow every year. In 2017, the difference was 18298 students. That was reduced to 16683 in 2018.
62562 students sat the 2018 Junior Certificate. Of these, almost 17% (10,561 students) took a Spanish paper (either higher or ordinary level). This compares with almost 50% (31,066 students) who did French in the exam.
In 2008, for every one student who took Spanish at Junior Cert level, almost 8 took a French paper. 10 years later, this has changed significantly. In 2018, for every student who sat the Spanish paper, just under 3 (2.94) did the French exam.
If these numbers interest you, view our complete analysis here – from 2008 to 2018.
Niamh Galvin, Spanish teacher at Bandon Grammar School in Cork, visits us in Valencia