An academic says young people are being put off studying foreign languages because they are not aware of the career options they lead to.
There has been a long-term fall in the numbers studying modern languages at school, raising concern that youngsters will miss out on work and cultural opportunities.
Newcastle University has been holding an event to promote the benefits of multilingualism.
Where are the North East and Cumbria in the national picture?
The number of students taking a language at GCSE has fallen from more than 550,000 before 2004 to just over 370,000 in 2024, according to analysis from the University of Leeds.
In 2025, the North East and the South West were the English regions with the joint lowest take-up of language GCSEs- with 0.42 taken per pupil compared to the England average of 0.50 and 0.69 in London, according to the University of Oxford.
Westmorland and Furness and Middlesbrough were both at the bottom five of the local authority league table for language GCSEs per pupil at 0.29.
Hartlepool was 12th bottom at 0.33 and Cumberland 19th bottom at 0.36.
Why are children and young people being put off?
A variety of factors are believed to lie behind the fall in uptake.
Languages stopped being compulsory in English schools at Key Stage 4 in 2004.
Many language teachers also feel their subject has lost out to an increased focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) learning in the curriculum.
And there is also a shortage of language teachers in many areas.
But Dr Jenny Arnold, lecturer in Spanish and Translation at Newcastle University, says there is also a wider under-valuing of language qualifications, with too many believing they are useful for careers in teaching and translation but having little awareness of the wider benefits.
We have [language] graduates who are in a vast range of careers… in business, finance, recruitment, in law, in journalism,” Arnold says.
Language graduates are “really attractive” to employers in areas such as national security, the intelligence service and defence, she says.