HUNDREDS fewer Scottish pupils sat Higher French this year compared to 2012, sparking fears for the subject's long-term future.
Figures from the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) showed a 9.6% decline in the number of French Higher pupils in 2013 compared to the previous year, down from 4688 to 4236.
The decline follows long-term trends in some modern languages, with numbers also falling in German.
However, this year the SQA figures showed an increase in candidates taking Higher Italian and Russian, and Spanish entries were up again after several years of increases.
Sarah Breslin, Scotland's National Centre for Languages director at Strathclyde University, called for a campaign raising awareness of the importance of French as a global language.
"French is still a popular language, but the decline at Higher is a bit worrying and we are also concerned there is a long-term decrease in the number of schools that are putting any candidates forward for Higher French," she said.
"We need to raise awareness among young people about the importance of French as a vital international language.
"French is the official language of important international bodies such as the OECD, the United Nations, Nato and the European Commission and there is currently a shortage of translators whose mother tongue is English.
"We are limiting the future employability of pupils and the representation from Scotland in these important organisations if we continue to see this decline."
Nathalie Korkmaz, director of the Alliance Francaise in Glasgow, which promotes the French language and culture, said parents were concerned about the drop.
"We do hear that schools have stopped offering French and there are also those families who say the amount of hours it is taught is not sufficient," she said.
The demise of languages in secondary has been blamed on the fact many schools no longer see them as compulsory, despite school inspectors calling for them to be a "core element" in the first three years of secondary.
In addition, as part of cuts to education budgets, two-thirds of local authorities have scrapped foreign language assistants, although some are now reinstating them.
There have also been problems in primary studies, with three-quarters of schools missing recommended targets for modern educational language delivery.
In May last year, a report by the Scottish Government's Languages Working Group said a decline in language learning at Scottish schools and universities was costing the economy at least half a billion pounds every year.
It said: "With fewer students taking languages to exam level ... this can impact on the viability of the language qualifications that the Scottish Qualifications Authority can offer and on higher education institutions maintaining their investment in language departments.
"This is resulting in fewer new teachers able to teach language skills and fewer linguists to satisfy the jobs market more generally."
The report pinned the blame on the previous Labour-led Scottish Government.
From 1989, an initiative called Languages for All had established compulsory language teaching up to S4, but this was swept away a decade later with a shift from compulsion to entitlement for secondary pupils.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Our ambitious languages policy to provide every child in Scotland with the opportunity to learn two languages in addition to their mother tongue by 2020 underlines our commitment to supporting a future workforce in a global economy.
"We have already invested an extra £4m to language learning for the forthcoming school year.
"We want all children to be able to benefit from the skills learning a language provides."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article