Which country is best in speaking languages?
Publication Date/Time
2016-07-20T15:45:00+00:00
Luxembourg is the country where most languages are taught during
secondary education
In most European countries, the holiday season is about to start. For
many people this is also the time of the year they will travel abroad
and discover new places. When travelling abroad it might require you
to speak another language than your mother tongue. Which country in
Europe would be able to speak most foreign languages?

The European Union publishes Open Data for each country on how many
different languages are learned per pupil in secondary education, both
at lower and upper level (ISCED level 2 and ISCED level 3, read more
about the levels here
[http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/isced-2011-en.pdf]).
The number is obtained by dividing the total number of pupils learning
a foreign language by the number of pupils at that level. A foreign
language is defined as follows by the European Union: "_A foreign
language is recognised as such in the curriculum or other official
document relating to education in the country. Irish, Luxembourgish
and regional languages are excluded, although provision may be made
for them in certain Member States. Allowing for exceptions, when one
of the national languages is taught in schools where it is not the
teaching language, it is not considered as a foreign language._" The
number of languages taught in upper secondary schools can be found in
the table below.

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/news_image_20160720.png]
 

Note that some of the larger countries, such as Spain and the UK, are
missing. Unfortunately their data was missing from the data set used
to calculate this table. Looking at the results, one can conclude that
Luxembourg is the country where most languages are learned during
secondary upper education. An explanation for this can found in the
fact that Luxembourg has three official languages, French, German and
Luxembourgish. Although, as explained earlier, Luxembourgish does not
count as an official language in the data set.

Look for the data yourself here
[http://www.europeandataportal.eu/data/dataset/szvtm7lrd1e6sbg5zip5mw]
