Spanish or Russian GCSE?

[ispecialiseinthis]

My DC GCSE options deadline is coming up and, as with most 14yo, they don’t currently have a career in mind.
The school will let them do a maximum of 10 GCSEs - 6 core subjects (triple science, English language and literature, maths). Doing both languages is not really an option, as it will mean dropping another option.

Any advice how to choose between the two languages? TIA

"Don't dare"?.. Gosh, they do teach you manners there if not Russian, don't they.

I loved Russian at O Level, and did use and develop it later on. I did it as a twilight subject (with French, German and Latin among my mainstream subjects). If DC is a keen linguist then they should just pick their favourite. Not learning/continuing Spanish now doesn’t really close doors other than A Level. Even at undergraduate level a lot of languages are available de novo these days, i.e. no previous knowledge required.

Sure, but I don’t think we can ever remember a time since the war when it wasn’t a hostile state so those cycles are pretty gosh darn long.

If your family is not using and other Slavic language at home, Russian is far more difficult to learn than Spanish for a native English speaker. It uses Cyrillic letters. Is as difficult as Polish or Czech etc but has far more difficult letter system as Not Latin based

Spanish for sure

My younger son has chosen Russian over French to take forward for GCSE as he enjoys it more. He's unlikely to take a language forward to a-level as he is much more STEM focused, and GCSE of any language isn't that much use, so let him choose.

Wow, thanks everyone - really appreciate all your posts.
To answer some questions:

-DC is already studying both subjects, having started Spanish in mid y7 and then Russian in y8
-understandably finds Spanish easier, due to both its similarity to English and having been learning it for bit longer
-there is only one Russian teacher at their school but it maybe that other MFL teachers can also teach Russian but there isn’t a need to currently due to numbers of pupils taking the subject.
-school offers Russian at A-level
-they are leaning towards Spanish but does not feel strongly either way so we were looking for guidance to help with the decision rather than pushing DC towards one over the other.

Will let you know what DC decides

From my bias perspective (I’m a Russian speaker), I’d advise Russian. It’s a pivot language, an intermediator language, and a critical language for future work potential (either for government agencies or private business). A Russian speaker will also stand out against other candidates of Spanish for example.

Considering the school is equipped and offers up to A-Level, I’d strongly encourage Russian over Spanish.

Russian, imagine they could be a spy with it!

This is an interesting discussion for sure. I do take the point that Russian GCSE is unusual and A level even more so (just over 1,000 entries in 2024; for context, 7,500 took French and more than 107,000 took maths ). So I guess having either would make a student stand out. Stand out for what tho? Are they likely to take the MFL for A level? Are they likely to want to pursue the MFL further and into a career? If so then yes, Russian may well be worth taking. If not then whichever is preferred or even, whichever they are likely to get a higher grade in.

What kind of school is this @ispecialiseinthis , if I can ask? Offering Russian is pretty unusual; is there a reason such as a high population locally of Ukrainians? Or is it simply that there is a Russian teacher at the school? Are these the only MFLs offered at the school?

I doubt that it may be that other MFL teachers can also teach Russian; I know a lot of MFL secondary teachers and I don’t know any (including my former colleague who studied Russian at uni) who could possibly teach Russian to any level. I would enquire of the school maybe as I imagine it would be a tough job to recruit a Russian teacher. I mean they hopefully wouldn’t need to, but in case they did want to take A level; for sure it would not be as straightforward as finding another Spanish teacher.

Russian: It is a difficult language for which involved learning support is needed, grammatically tricky, but absolutely amazing in its richness.

Spanish you can learn independently, as it is much simpler.

Strategically, Russian is the better choice. Anyone with any knowledge of language will be impressed to see that on their CV. It takes discipline and patience to stick with it. Spanish would not stand out to the same degree. If they are ambitious, I would go for Russian.

As has been said previously, a GCSE is not enough to speak a language properly so I would encourage DC to pick the language/culture(s) they are the most drawn to.
If they do decide at 18 they want to learn a language (including from scratch), they can do so at uni, for example, history with Russian/Spanish, or as an elective module .

I had Russian 8 years at school and never ever had opportunity to use it afterwards.

While unfortunate, it doesn’t mean OP’s DD won’t have the opportunity to use Russian.

One point (that I am not sure any one else has made yet) is that it is both extremely useful and fun when learning a language to go to that country and practice speaking it.

Holidays, courses and exchanges will all be easily available in Spain (or central and south anerica if you have the cash) over the course of the next couple of years. Visiting Russia on the other hand would be a bad idea so language learning opportunities are more likely to be limited to school.

Visiting Russia isn’t a bad idea. It is perfectly safe as long as you’re not on the border in the war zone. And there is Belarus, Latvia, along with the CIS countries which all speak Russian, or provide opportunity for learning / enhancing / utilising Russian language.

Spanish

Well the foreign office currently advises against all travel to Russia and Belarus. This means that regardless of how safe you night consider it to be personally in these countries your travel insurance would not be valid. I don't see that a school would be able to arrange a trip legally under these circumstances and I imagine responsible parents would only consider taking their child if there were an important family connection.

As for the baltic states I don't think any of them have Russia as their official language though they do have a minority of Russian speakers. Maybe it would be possible to find russian language speaking opportunities in one of those countries or in a former soviet state. However it will be much harder and less likely to happen then speaking Spanish where you can very easily travel to Spain.

Where? In what circumstances is it widely used in UK? There are hundred of thousands of people from Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Czechia etc who speak fluent Russian as they had it at school and their slavic native language is similar to Russian . After 2 months of learning they speak way better than GCSE level. Do you think there are many jobs requiring Russian at the GCSE level? With current political climate it is unlikely that there will be a thriving business with Russia where that GCSE level of language will be used.
Much more likely a person will travel for holidays to Spain than to Russia.

I always find it a bit odd that there's often an insistence that learning a language has to have practical applied usage in order to be valid, which doesn't seem to come into play with other subjects. How many people are actually going to use the content of their GCSE biology or chemistry or history course in their future job (or on holiday!)? Even Maths - lots of jobs in finance etc don't actually require the use of GCSE level calculation. Of course some people will use specialist content knowledge in their future jobs, but in a lot of cases what they're gaining by taking a variety of subjects at GCSEs is the skills that come from studying them - you get different skills from studying science or geography or English Lit or music or history. Languages are no different. Maybe I'm biased on this as a Classics graduate - it was always obvious to me that I was never going to actually use my Latin and Greek beyond university (as I didn't want to teach or go into academia) - but I took the subject because I found it interesting, and it teaches a very good range of skills (writing, research, discussion, lit crit, accurate reading and language interrogation etc) . I don't see Russian as being any different - the process of learning a language - any language - is valuable and teaches lots of skills, and if you're interested in Russian culture, history, music, literature etc then it's a fascinating subject.

@tobyj I don't think language learning needs to have a direct practical use. I think education should be about developing the mind as you say. It's just that if you are learning a modern language it's quite fun to have the option to practice it in the country and Spanish seems to have the advantage on that point.

That said of course the OPs child should learn the language they prefer.

BP has been making billions in Russia every year until very recently and one year into the war they were still there as well as HSBC and Unilever https://www.cityam.com/bp-unilever-hsbc-have-failed-to-properly-exit-russia-new-report-warns/

The UK is still buying Russian oil https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68018660.amp

It seems the cycles of making profit never actually stopped.

I'd do Russian. It won't always be the worlds pariah, it's a country with a great literary canon, it will be much harder to pick up Russian at a later date and, as you say, it might well be something that sets your DC apart when it comes to applying to uni/jobs in the future. Everything is so competitive now - I'd do whatever I could to give my DC an edge!

Spies are paid chicken feed 😁 But those employed in perfectly legal jobs to find perfectly legal loopholes and organising perfectly legal business operations as above are making a fortune now.

People employed in oil and gas industry do travel to Russia regularly. I mean British people with no family ties to Russia, just travelling on business. No idea what they do insurance-wise but business travel continues, it's a fact.

Do people not know Russian is also spoken outside of Russia? It’s a lingua franca across Central Asia, not to mention it makes learning other Slavic languages easier. I’d stick with Russian - Spanish is easy to pick up again at a later date or to self-study (a lot more resources out there than for Russian).