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The declining fortunes of languages in schools have been causing concern for decades - as far back as 2007, the Dearing review was addressing the sharp fall in numbers after languages were made optional at key stage 4.

Analysis of 2026 national entries data, however, reveals a trend that goes against that prevailing narrative: the rise of “other modern languages”, which ����Vlog has been told is a source of “huge, untapped potential” in schools.

What exactly this category comprises can change from year to year, but Ofqual has provided ����Vlog with the languages included in the 2026 data: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Italian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Panjabi, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.

The rise of ‘other modern languages’

It has already been well documented that the rise of Spanish has counteracted the decline of the two traditional mainstays of languages teaching in the UK, French and German.

Less well known, however, is the rise, since the Covid pandemic, of other modern languages - and this often refers to the language a pupil speaks at home.

While shows a year-on-year dip in entries for other modern languages - after a high of 42,945 in 2025 - the 2026 total of 41,300 is still 28.7 per cent up on the 2019 figure of 32,100.

For context, this now makes it the third most popular category of GCSE modern languages in England, behind Spanish (132,680 entries) and French (121,040). It is ahead of German (32,525), while there were 10,960 entries for ancient languages.

There is a similar story at A level, albeit with far fewer numbers: during the Covid years, entries for “other modern languages” slumped to a low of 5,315 in 2021, but they have risen each year since, reaching 6,795 in the 2026 figures.

‘Huge, untapped potential’

Tom Middlehurst, deputy policy director at the Association of School and College Leaders, hails the increase in entries as a positive, but to harness this interest in “other” languages in schools, he believes a bespoke strategy must be devised by the profession and government.

“It’s good to see that the number of entries to other modern languages has increased, but, in truth, there remains a huge, untapped potential resource in terms of home, heritage and community languages,” Mr Middlehurst told ����Vlog.

He stressed that having recognised qualifications in these languages makes students more employable and valuable to the country’s skills pipeline.

“However, the teaching of these subjects relies upon schools being able to carve out the time and resources to find a teacher and sort out the administration and logistics involved in delivering these qualifications, alongside the many other demands upon them,” Mr Middlehurst said.

“It would be a good idea for the government and profession to work on a strategy that builds on the rising interest in other modern languages at GCSE to embed these across earlier key stages.”

����Vlog has asked the Department for Education whether such a strategy is being planned.

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Vicky Gough, schools adviser for the British Council, told ����Vlog that these languages are often taught in community education bases on weekends, but added that schools are, where possible, providing .

Ms Gough said that the number of students taking other languages “should be much higher” because more than one in five state-funded pupils (1.5 million) speaks a language other than English at home, but GCSEs “are not available in all languages”.

She said: “Romanian is the number-one language spoken in London after English, but there is no Romanian GCSE, and this is true for a range of other languages.

“Additionally, many pupils and their parents might not recognise the value of having a GCSE in a home language.”

Difficulty of creating new GCSEs

To roll out a new formal GCSE, exam boards need certified examiners, an established curriculum and qualified teachers within the schools system.

But the upsurge in languages such as Romanian is relatively recent, so the pool of qualified British-based Romanian teachers is small. There is, however, a GCSE in another eastern European language, Polish, which has more speakers than Romanian in the UK as a whole.

Ms Gough said key considerations for exam boards are the number of schools willing to teach the language and the financial returns available.

“Qualifications were historically created for more traditional modern foreign languages (like French or German) or for established migrant communities that have had decades to build up a teaching infrastructure in UK schools (like Polish or Urdu),” she added.

The British Council also stressed that decisions on which languages to offer at GCSE and A level are made by independent awarding bodies - such as AQA, Pearson Edexcel and Cambridge OCR - rather than government.

“They require a reliable financial return and a broad base of schools willing to teach the subject to cover the costs of designing and maintaining the qualification,” it added.

A spokesperson for AQA, England’s largest exam board, told ����Vlog that no qualifications are established without a “strong business case”, although “as a registered charity, we’re able to offer qualifications in subjects with relatively low entries because it’s the right thing to do”.

Outside the traditional big hitters of Spanish, French and German, the AQA website advises that in 2027 there will be in Bengali, Chinese (Mandarin), Hebrew (modern), Italian, Panjabi, Polish and Urdu; at A level there will be exams in Bengali, Hebrew (biblical), Hebrew (modern), Italian, Panjabi and Polish.

AQA did caution that, while overall entries have risen for “other modern languages”, the individual increases are “relatively small when you take into account the range of languages on offer”.

Addressing ‘crisis’ in language learning

A on community languages in the academic journal Languages, Society and Policy argued that one way to address the “crisis” facing language learning in schools and beyond was “to harness the untapped linguistic potential of multilingual pupils”.

It pointed to the post-Covid rise of other modern languages in terms of GCSE entries - while noting that “uptake at A level has not recovered so well” - and argued that “increased focus on school-age speakers of [home, heritage and community languages (HHCL)] could make a major contribution to improving the state of language learning in the UK”.

Kate Lightfoot, one of the authors, told ����Vlog that it is “hard to know” what is driving the increase in entries without a breakdown of entries per language. Ofqual told ����Vlog it could not provide such a breakdown.

Ms Lightfoot said the work of “supplementary” education settings in helping students to attain qualifications in “heritage languages” could be a factor, citing in particular the “strong network” of Polish Saturday classes.

A key question now is how much determination there is at a policy level to help schools meet the demand for the increasingly rich mix of “other modern languages”.

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