You might think that if you stop using a language after studying it at school, you will end up forgetting everything you knew. But this isn’t true. Language knowledge will stay in your brain for decades.
In 2022, around 25,000 A-levels and around 315,000 GCSEs were taken in a modern foreign language. This means that language GCSEs taken have fallen by more than 40%, and A-levels by around 25%, over the past 20 years. Between 2014 and 2019, entries to modern language GCSEs fell by 19%.
This is a worrying trend, not least because learning a language is valuable in and of itself. Among the many benefits are better performance on general standardised tests and a boost to your wage.
