I was no good at French and just scraped through O level. Forty years later I still knew far more than my daughters who were doing GCSEs. They learned useful phrases like how to get to the station but I had learned four tenses and enough vocabulary to read a book in French.
My grandchildren learned a few words in French and Spanish but took no exams.
Modern languages are now “too hard” and few children are being taught them, let alone Latin which I also had to study. I know a student who got into Oxford without any language at all.
I suppose it’s outdated to consider that a good education should include languages (plus art and music)
