Every year, the CSS team analyses Department of Education figures on the number of students taking Spanish, French and German at both Leaving Cert and Junior Cycle level. We try to identify trends with the numbers provided by the Department of Education to see which languages are becoming more and less popular with students.
In 2014, 26,496 students sat the French Leaving Cert paper, with 5,340 doing Spanish. This means that 21,156 more students took French than Spanish in that year.
Ten years later in 2024, this gap was down to 7,642. Spanish numbers in this time have almost doubled to 10,309 in 2024, with French numbers falling to 17,951.
As one language (Spanish) continues its growth, the other main languages offered by Irish secondary schools continue to decline.
In the 10 years since 2014, the numbers taking Spanish have risen in every year, bar one (2018).
In the same period, the numbers taking French have fallen in 9 of the subsequent 10 years. The only exception was in 2015.
Since 2014, the numbers taking German increased every year for the next 6 years – but in the last 4 years that number has declined every year. In 2020, 8,701 students took the Leaving Cert German paper. That number had fallen to 7,033 in 2024 and, like French, is seemingly on a downward trajectory.
Looking at the Junior Cycle figures for 2024, it was another record breaking year for Spanish, with 18,426 students doing the paper. French still had a strong lead in this exam, with 29,257 students sitting the exam. German is well down the list here, with just 10,603 students doing the exam.
All our data has been taken from the State Examinations Commission website, under the “Statistics” part of their website:
https://www.examinations.ie/statistics/
If these numbers interest you, view our complete analysis here – from 2008 to 2024.
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