Prague, Feb 23 (CTK) – A total of 51,689 children of Czech elementary and secondary schools were taught Russian in the past school year, double the figure compared with the school year 2011/2012, according to the Education Ministry statistics released on Tuesday.
The rise is partly due to the introduction of the second foreign language at elementary schools in 2013. At that time, the number of the children studying Russian increased by over 15,000 in a single year.
At present, Russian is the third most taught language after English and German.
The interest in Russian has been growing not only at elementary schools, but also in other educational institutions.
At the Jipka language school, the number of students of Russian surged by 35 percent in autumn 2015 alone.
“One can see the biggest rise in the interest in the age group of 20-30. These are mostly absolute beginners who never studied any other language in the past,” Jipka director Martina Novakova said.
“Some of them need Russian for their jobs, others have it as their favourite pastime,” Novakova said.
Employers increasingly demand the knowledge of Russian.
The companies mostly want programmers, dealers and mechanic engineers to know Russian, Zuzana Lincova, director of the Profesia.cz working portal, has told CTK.
“Between 2014 and 2015, we could see a considerable growth in the job offers in which employers demanded the knowledge of Russian. The number surged by 35 percent,” Lincova said.
