My daughter wants to drop a foreign language in the Leaving Cert. Should she?

My daughter in transition year has been asked to select her Leaving Cert subjects. She is obliged to select Irish, English and maths. She wants to drop French to focus on other subjects where she is stronger. I’m not in favour as a foreign language is always useful. I assumed a third language was a requirement for third level entry. Is this not the case?

Given the wide range of new Leaving Cert subjects introduced in recent years – such as politics and society, physical education and new ones coming on stream such as drama film and theatre studies, and climate action and sustainable development – it is not surprising that your daughter would be tempted to drop her continental language at this stage when selecting her four optional subjects.

While a third language requirement continues to exist for many courses in NUI universities, this is not the case across many others. Many second-level schools, however, prefer their students to study a third language. Most prioritise continental languages by offering them at a single subject slot with a single non-language subject option for those for whom a third language is inappropriate.

Is it wise to drop a foreign language? The lifelong advantages of being competent in one of the big languages spoken on the continental EU would seem to be self-evident.

My daughter wants to drop a foreign language in the Leaving Cert. Should she?

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Irish graduates and school-leavers are competing for jobs from other jurisdictions where fluency in four languages is common. Having a language is still something many employers look for.

In addition to employability gains, learning foreign languages has proven cognitive benefits and enables employees to demonstrate greater intercultural competence.

The strength of the Irish economy is due in large part to our unique situation of being the only English-speaking country (apart from tiny Malta) within the EU, a market of 360 million consumers.

Culturally, of course, we feel close to the English-speaking world of North America, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Many of our graduates go on to seek employment on the other side of the world, often in precarious legal situations, rather than in roles on continental Europe where they have an entitlement to live and work without restriction.

A worrying development here is that continental language take-up at Leaving Cert level has dropped by 10 per cent to 65 per cent over the last five years.

Given the current political uncertainty relating to potential tariff barriers between the EU market and the US, is it wise to allow future generations of workers to become handicapped in their language communications potential?

Why not ask your daughter to look at the career options there are in languages, just to give her a sense of how valuable a skill it is. Languagesconnect.ie, for example, includes a range of career videos from a wide array of professions to demonstrate how crucial it is to engage with language learning.