Russian was being taught to about 4.5 times more pupils than French and 2.5 times more than Spanish in Czech primary schools in the last school year, according to data from the Education Ministry, released ahead of the implementation of a new framework curriculum which will phase out the teaching of Russian and some other languages.
Last year, around 47,850 pupils studied Russian, 10,370 studied French, and just over 18,500 studied Spanish.
According to the new framework curriculum presented by the ministry on Tuesday, a second foreign language will be compulsory from seventh grade at the latest, while it is now compulsory from eighth grade at the latest. Pupils will have a choice of German, French and Spanish, while Russian, Italian and other languages will disappear from the offer. At the same time, children will learn English from the first grade, whereas now they have their first foreign language no later than in the third grade.
The number of pupils learning German is much higher, about 227,000 in the 2023-2024 school year, including nearly 6,000 who learnt German as their first foreign language. About 570 pupils learnt Italian at primary school, and around 1,300 learnt some other European language.
The first foreign language taught at Czech primary schools is most often English. Last school year, 879,640 pupils were learning English, and for all but 2,870 of them it was their first foreign language.
