The Language Circus in a nutshell

Foreign language choices are falling - Language Circus comes to rescue in Finland

Finland has a fine tradition of foreign language studies. Fluency in at least two languages other than one’s own native Finnish or Swedish was until the 1990s a cornerstone in Finns’ conceptions of a well-educated person. The Finnish education system makes it possible to study more languages than the two compulsory ones, which are the second, i.e. non-native, national language (Finnish or Swedish), and one foreign language. The foreign language is English, in 95% of the cases. Of the two compulsory languages, one must start in grade 3 at the latest, and the other must start in grade 7 at the latest.  An optional language can be offered by the education provider starting in grade 5 the latest (long syllabus) as well as in grade 8 (short syllabus). There are no restrictions as to what languages are to be offered. With English as the predominant compulsory “long language”, the optional long languages are Swedish, German, French and Russian, here listed in their traditional order of popularity. Spanish is a new-comer with signs of increasing popularity. The optional short languages are German, French, Russian, English in extremely rare cases and increasingly, Spanish, sometimes Italian, Estonian, Chinese, Japanese.

The table below shows at what level different languages start and which are the most popular optional languages.
    

It was still very popular in the late 90’s to study an optional “long syllabus” language, with almost 40% of all pupils choosing to do so. The present figures are closer to 20%. There is also a dramatic decline in the number of pupils who choose to study an optional  short syllabus language: the enrolments are now one-third of what they were in the 1990s with more than 40% of pupils optional German, French, Russian. German, a language widely studied in Finland until the mid 90’s, is the language that has suffered the most. The optional long syllabus languages have to deal with two major problems: one is the decreasing enrolments, and the other is the frequent drop-outs.

Many schools and municipalities aim to offer their pupils the possibility to study an optional A-language in basic school, but an increasing amount of pupils choose not to study any optional languages. One of the reasons can be that studying an optional language seems difficult and comes in addition to all the rest of the schoolwork. Besides, the benefits that come from learning a new language might be unclear to people. In addition to this, languages, as an optional subject, have to compete against art and craft subjects, which is difficult considering that from these subjects pupils