MORE sixth-form girls at some of the highest-scoring private schools are studying foreign languages, thanks to the new AS-levels, a survey by the Girls’ Day School Trust shows.
Until recently, the number of sixth-formers taking modern languages had been either static or in decline at most of the trust’s 25 member schools, said Barbara Harrison, its education adviser. But from September, half of the schools had reported a rise, she told a trust conference in London this week.
However, she said the number of trust pupils who go on to study a foreign language at university had dropped in recent years, despite high levels of success in languages - 70 per cent of trust pupils who take French A-level get an A or B. Languages were losing out to subjects such as medicine, which takes more than a third of leavers.