Enlarge image
"Many people perceive German as more difficult than other languages": British schoolchildren (archive image)
Photo: DPA / PA
Popular is different: while in 2001 571,000 students in England chose German for their Mittlere-Reife exam (GCSE), in 2020 the figure was just over 40,000 - a decline of over 90 percent.
At the A-Levels comparable to the Abitur, the number of German candidates recently fell to just 2,666.
That comes from the annual Language Trends report of the British cultural institute British Council.
Accordingly, interest in the German language dwindled, especially shortly after the turn of the century: in 2005, only a little more than 100,000 children with German were registered for the GCSE examination subject.
more on the subject
Great Britain in crisis: the Brexit capital has had enough of Boris Johnson, Jörg Schindler reports from Boston
One of the reasons: The Labor government at the time abolished the obligation to choose at least one foreign language as an examination subject in 2004.
Since then, the interest of English students in German has steadily decreased.
"That was undoubtedly catastrophic and that is also the main reason why you always swim against the current if you want to strengthen languages," says Katrin Kohl, who teaches German at Oxford University, in an interview with the dpa news agency.
Little knowledge of Germany
Kohl does not have high hopes that the trend can be reversed.
It is worthwhile for fewer and fewer schools to offer the subject.
And once there is no longer a teacher who can teach German, the subject rarely returns to school.
But why do fewer and fewer children in England want to learn German? Has the supposedly humorless country of the former war opponents lost even more of its attractiveness than it already has? Vicky Gough of the British Council doesn't think so. It is clear, however, that Spain is associated with beach holidays for many children in Great Britain and is therefore more attractive. On the other hand, many English students know next to nothing about Germany.
In addition, there is a statistical problem that should not be underestimated: Those who choose German as an examination subject do a little worse on average than classmates who choose history, for example.
This is not only a problem for young people, but also for schools, whose quality and good reputation are measured by the performance of their pupils in central exams.
The government is trying to counteract this, and changes have actually been made to the grading for the GSCE.
But such reforms are still pending for the A-Level, which is comparable to the Abitur.
Only for those particularly gifted with languages?
German still has a reputation for being a particularly difficult language. Learning German is therefore almost elitist, says Gough: "Many people perceive German to be more difficult than other languages and therefore think that it is only reserved for the most linguistically gifted students." At the same time, Brexit and the pandemic will make it increasingly difficult for schools To organize exchange programs.
According to the report, there has been a particularly strong decline in the German offer at state schools and in economically weaker areas.
While 70 percent of English private schools still offer German for 11 to 14-year-olds, this is only the case at a third of state schools.
And while the schools offering German are concentrated in the rich south of the country, the economically remote north-east of England brings up the rear.
him / dpa
