Non-nationals secured very good marks in a range of languages offered in the Leaving Cert this year, writes Áine Kerr
Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian and Slovakian were new additions to the Leaving Certificate exam schedule this year, amid a list already boasting languages such as Polish, Czech and Estonian, in reflection of Ireland's migration trends.
The easiest subject in the entire Leaving Certificate subject line-up in which to achieve an honours grade remains Russian, despite it declining from a 100 per cent honours rate in 2005 to 98 per cent this year. The subject which attracted 158 students this year is immediately followed by the newly added subject of Lithuanian which achieved almost a 98 per cent honours rate among its 45 students. But compared to Russian in which 75 per cent of students received an A1, only 20 per cent achieved the same grade in Lithuanian. The other newcomer of Latvian enrolled some 16 students for the Leaving Certificate this year, with no student achieving an A1 and 18 per cent achieving an A2.
The fourth easiest subject to pass at Leaving Certificate level is Polish, with 95 per cent of students achieving an honour. Of the 20 Polish students, 35 per cent achieved an A1.
In the long list of foreign languages inclusive of Japanese, Dutch, Finish, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic, French and German remain most popular.
However, despite the lengthening language exam list, the employers' group IBEC has expressed concern at the poor level of foreign language competence and the decrease in the number of students learning foreign languages.
IBEC claim that since 1997, the number of students taking French, German, Spanish and Italian in the Leaving Certificate has dropped by 7 per cent from 79 per cent to 72 per cent and that the range of languages available in secondary schools needs to better reflect the reality of modern global communications. Currently, four out of five of those who take languages study French and only 4.5 per cent study Spanish, the second most commonly spoken language in the world.