VALENCIA TRAILS IN FOREIGN-LANGUAGE LEARNING

According to Government figures for 2010 Valencia is at the back of the line when it comes to foreign-language learning in Spain.

Around 72 percent of school students in Valencia study English while six percent take French. That total puts the region nearly 13 points below Spain's 85-percent national average of students who study foreign languages.

Valencia, Andalusia (78 percent) and Catalonia (79 percent) are the only three regions where language-learning drops below 80 percent. Castilla-La Mancha tops the list with 94 percent studying foreign languages, according to the statistics.

By way of contrast in conservative controlled Valencia, religious schooling in Catholicism, a subject that no longer counts towards university credits, has gone up several points in the national classification. Some 75 percent of junior school students study the Catholic religion during school hours, 65 percent in high school.

The lower percentage of language learning is concentrated in the early years of education. For children aged between three and six, just short of 6,000 students (four percent of students at that age) study English. In Junior school, that percentage jumps to 95 percent, although nearly all the other regions report 100 percent.

In high school (ESO), English is studied by 98 percent of students, just one percentage point below the average. The importance of the catechism in the Valencian ESO curriculum is due to the fact that the time allocated to teaching the Catholic religion is double that of the rest of Spain (two hours per week, at the cost of one hour of Philosophy.)