How many students study Catalan in Northern Catalonia?

BarcelonaCatalan language teaching in Northern Catalonia is not showing significant improvement. Only 19% of students have any contact with Catalan during their education, the same as five years ago and just two percentage points higher than a decade ago. This represents 15,700 students out of a total of 82,800, according to data from [source missing]. the Public Office of the Catalan LanguageA study analyzing the 2024-25 school year found that 81% of young students in Northern Catalonia do not encounter Catalan at school. Only 6% of students who study Catalan receive bilingual or immersive instruction (4,864). Half of the schools offer Catalan, but the number of students drops drastically as the educational level increases, making it difficult to foster fluency and effective use of the language. However, in primary school (ages 3-10), where Catalan is most prevalent in education, the increase is significant: in a decade, the percentage of students who have contact with the language has risen from 25% to 31% (13,000 children). 22% receive introductory Catalan, 5.6% study in bilingual schools, and 2.8% participate in immersion programs: 1,100 students attend Arrels or Bressola schools, which are growing but very slowly and represent a very small minority. However, bilingual education has gained one percentage point in a decade.

In primary schools (ages 11-14), approximately 500 students lost their Catalan language skills between 2008 and 2018, and these numbers have not been recovered: in 2024, only one in ten students studied Catalan (9.5%). And in secondary schools (ages 15-17), the decline is more noticeable, because despite being very low, it has still dropped two percentage points in the last decade: only 2.7% study Catalan (fewer than 500 students of this age follow some form of Catalan instruction). According to a complaint filed by Plataforma per la Llengua following the publication of this data, "the vast majority of students in Northern Catalonia do not have access to any effective education that would allow them to become Catalan speakers."

Promote the social use of Catalan

Last summer, the Catalan government (Generalitat) approved an €800,000 grant for the Association of Friends of the Bressola (Asociación de Amigos de la Bressola) to fund teaching staff in 2025. This Thursday, the Catalan government announced its support for the Association for the Teaching of Catalan (APLEC). The grant, also €80,000, aims to extend Catalan language instruction beyond the school setting and make it more widely used in society. They estimate that the funding will allow them to hire more teachers and, consequently, enroll approximately one thousand new students in the language. It will also enable the publication of a children's magazine. A Thousand DemonsThe only Catalan-language magazine aimed at children in Northern Catalonia, which reaches 40,000 families every quarter, the formation of a network of families for Catalan, a summer school, an ImpliCAT event, and a school festival. To improve the use of Catalan, the Catalan Government has also granted €17,000 to Ràdio Arrels, which has a regular Catalan-language program and is currently facing financial difficulties and anticipates being cut off by the French administration. The Minister of Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, participated in the Government's Christmas event in Perpignan, where he stated that "Northern Catalonia is a founding part of Catalan identity" and that the Generalitat wants to "strengthen the knowledge, appreciation, and use of Catalan."