The chart displays the proportions of primary school students who learned a second foreign language in New Zealand from 2006 to 2014.
Overall, French was by far the most popular language to learn in New Zealand primary schools. In addition, all languages mentioned experienced fluctuations in varying degrees.
At the beginning of the period, French was learned by 29% of students, which is closely followed by Japanese. However, while the figure for French remains unchanged despite some inconsistency, that for Japanese plummeted to around 17% after 8 years, leading to Spanish replacing Japanese to become the second most popular language. Specifically, the proportions of New Zealand students learning Spanish increased slightly from just over 20% to around 23% over the period surveyed.
Concerning the remaining languages, the figure for the Chinese language rose dramatically from 3% to peak at 13%. Conversely, the popularity of German among New Zealand primary school students saw a steady decline from 13% to reach a low of 6% in the last year. Meanwhile, the percentage of students pursuing other languages began at 6%, after which it rose gradually in the first 4 years before recording wild fluctuations to finish off at approximately 8%.
