Intersectionality and modern foreign languages at Key Stage 5

“This post is the latest in our occasional series on intersectionality and Key Stage 5 subject choice. So far, we’ve looked at how likely pupils are to go on to study A-Levels in any subject , and separately at STEM subjects . Today we’ll focus on modern foreign languages (MFL). I’ll look both at data on all MFL A-Levels, and separately at A-Levels with the highest number of entries: Spanish and French. Entry numbers for other qualifications are substantially lower and do not allow for this type of analysis. Even for A-Level French and Spanish, numbers for many groups are unfortunately too low for us to publish. Data As for the other posts in this series, I’ll be using data from the KS5 exam, KS4 pupil and census tables of the National Pupil Database. I include those who completed KS4 in 2022 at a mainstream, state-funded school in England and who went on to complete KS5 exams in 2024. I exclude students for whom data on ethnicity, gender or disadvantage (based on whether pupils were eligible for free school meals at some point during the last six years – FSM6) is unavailable. This leaves us with a group of 563,886 pupils. Gender vs ethnicity Female students are more likely to study modern foreign languages at A-Level than their male peers. This difference is large when looked at one way: 3.0% of female KS4 pupils in our dataset went on to study languages last year compared to 1.3% of male pupils, meaning female pupils were more than twice as likely to do so. But it’s fairly small when looked at in terms of percentage points: just 1.7 pp. So bear in mind throughout this piece that relatively small differences in percentage points can represent some quite big differences in probability. The chart below shows the gender difference in the percentage of KS4 pupils going on to take MFL A-Levels broken down by ethnic background. You can use the drop-down menu to select a qualification of interest. Note that data on pupils from some ethnic backgrounds is not included because the numbers taking qualifications were too low to meet data protection standards. Any MFL A-Level French Spanish Across all qualifications and ethnic backgrounds, female pupils were more likely to go on to take an MFL A-Level than male pupils. Pupils from an Other White background had the biggest gender gap, while those from Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds had the smallest. Now let’s look at the actual percentages going on to take MFL A-Levels, rather than just looking at the gap. Again, you can you the drop-down menu below to select a qualification of interest. Any MFL A-Level French Spanish Here we can see that some of the groups with the largest gender gaps (Other White, Other and Chinese) are also those in which both male and female pupils were more likely to go on to take MFL: the larger difference in percentage points reflects the larger overall numbers. Some groups with smaller gender differences in terms of percentage points actually have quite large differences in terms of probability. Pupils from Pakistani and Black Caribbean backgrounds, for example, both have a small gender difference in percentage points, but in both cases, girls are around three times more likely than boys to go on to take MFL at A-Level. FSM6 vs ethnicity Last year, just 1% of pupils who were in the FSM6 group at the end of KS4 entered an A-Level in MFL, compared to 2.6% of their peers; so non-FSM6 pupils were 2.6 times more likely to enter. In comparison, 23.5% of FSM6 pupils entered an A-Level in any subject, and 48.4% of their peers; so non-FSM6 pupils were 2.1 times more likely to enter . In other words, FSM6 pupils seem particularly unlikely to go on to enter MFL A-Levels compared to other subjects. Let’s see how this breaks down by ethnicity. The dropdown menu on the chart below allows you to select a subject of interest. Any MFL A-Level French Spanish As with gender, we see a large difference in terms of percentage points for those from an Other White background and a small difference for those from a Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Other Asian background. Let’s look at the actual percentages progressing for more context. Again, you can use the dropdown menu to select a subject of interest. Any MFL A-Level French Spanish We can see again that pupils from an Other White background are the most likely to go on to enter an MFL A-Level, and the large percentage point difference partly reflects this. Groups with the largest differences in terms of probability are those from White British, Mixed White and Black Caribbean, and Mixed White and Asian backgrounds. For the latter two, non-FSM6 pupils are around 3.5 times more likely to enter MFL A-Levels, and for White British pupils non-FSM6 pupils are around 5 times more likely. Gender vs FSM We’ve already seen that female pupils are more likely than male pupils to go on to enter MFL A-Levels, but let’s see what happens when we break that down by FSM6 status. Any MFL A-Level French Spanish The gender difference is very consistent when broken down by FSM6; for all groups shown here, girls were around 2.2 times more likely to go on to enter an MFL A-Level than boys. Three-way interactions Finally, let’s look at what happens when we include all three characteristics: gender, ethnicity and disadvantage. We’ve included the entire list, including a subject-by-subject breakdown, here as an appendix . Please note that some of the resulting groups are quite small, so bear this in mind when interpreting the data. The groups most likely to progress to study an MFL A-Level were: female, non-disadvantaged pupils from Other White backgrounds female, non-disadvantaged pupils from Other ethnic backgrounds female, non-disadvantaged pupils from Chinese backgrounds female, non-disadvantaged pupils from Other Mixed backgrounds female, non-disadvantaged pupils from Mixed White / Asian backgrounds The groups least likely to progress were: female, disadvantaged pupils from White British backgrounds male, disadvantaged pupils from Bangladeshi backgrounds male, non-disadvantaged pupils from Pakistani backgrounds male, disadvantaged pupils from White British backgrounds male, disadvantaged pupils from Pakistani backgrounds We should note that we have suppressed data on some groups due to small numbers. Summing up We’ve not been able to delve in subject-by-subject analysis much in this post because of the smaller numbers involved. But we have seen some interesting differences in progression to MFL A-Levels in any subject. We’ve seen that pupils from some ethnic backgrounds – most notably Other White and Chinese – are most likely to go on to study MFL, and those from other – particularly Pakistani – are less likely. But this does vary by gender and disadvantage.

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