Last school year, when the Ministry of Education asked school leaders what foreign language teachers would be needed in addition, 174 schools answered that they needed German language teachers, 65 – French, 31 – Spanish. And at that time, school leaders were not yet aware of the ministry’s plan to ensure that from 2026/2027 Latvian schools would gradually abandon Russian as a second foreign language, writes the magazine And.
Currently, the ministry is still trying to estimate how many and what language teachers would be needed if the government adopts amendments to the basic education standard, which would require schools to teach only the official languages of the European Union (EU) along with English. At the University of Latvia, only five prospective German language teachers are currently studying, but no French, Spanish or other EU language teachers are being prepared for work at the school. How will Latvian schools get foreign language teachers?
Currently, no regulatory document determines what the second foreign language should be. It is determined by the school. When surveying schools, the ministry concluded that most schools in Latvia offer Russian as a second foreign language, the second most popular offer is German, and 12% of students learn it. French, which is the second most used foreign language in European institutions after English, is studied by only around four thousand students, which is only two percent of school-aged children. In a third of Latvian schools (315), students have no choice – the only foreign language that the school offers them to learn is Russian.
Read more in the magazine And here.
