The number of children taking GCSE modern Hebrew has increased by more than 10 per cent in five years, bucking the general decline in entries for modern languages, according to a new report.

French and German entries had dropped by 30 per cent over the same period, the British Council’s Language Trends 2019 stated.

Hebrew was one of the languages that had enjoyed higher take-up, including Arabic, Chinese and Italian.

The perceived difficulty of language exams as well as a general push in education towards science and technology had contributed to the overall fall in numbers, the report found.

But it also raised the question whether the number of native speakers taking GCSE languages had also distorted the grading system, making it harder for students learning it as a foreign language to achieve the highest marks.

Samantha Benson, director of education at Pajes, the Jewish Leadership Council's schools network, was confident the rise in Hebrew entries was "a result of the increased focus at primary and secondary school on Ivrit, which is an intitiatve that PaJes has spearheaded over the past few years. 

"This was one of our goals when launching the Yesh Va'Yesh programme in 2014 and in providing regular professional development and support to secondary Ivrit teachers."

As for native Hebrew speakers, she added, "they often sit the exam in year nine and, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no significant percentage increase in native speakers taking modern Hebrew GCSE over the last five years."