Intercultural communication takes place across thousands of languages, classrooms and communities. The latest figures below show the scale of linguistic diversity, how students report developing global competence, and where access to language learning remains uneven.
Contents
- Global linguistic diversity
- Measured student proficiency
- School activities that build communication
- Everyday contact across borders
- Equity gaps in intercultural learning
- Adult foreign-language skills
- Foreign-language learning pathways
Global linguistic diversity
UNESCO’s World Atlas of Languages documents 8,324 spoken or signed languages worldwide in 2025. Around 7,000 are still in use, but only 351 documented languages are used as a medium of instruction. These figures put everyday communication and education in very different contexts: a language can remain active in a community without being represented in formal schooling. UNESCO, What you need to know about multilingual education
UNESCO also reports that one language disappears every two weeks. In the same 2025 account, 40% of learners globally do not receive education in their mother tongue. In some low- and middle-income countries, the share is as high as 90%, affecting more than 250 million learners who are not being taught in a language they understand. These are global estimates and broad ranges, so they should not be read as a single country-level measure.
Daily multilingualism is widespread. Estimates place the share of the world’s population using two or more languages in daily life between one-half and two-thirds. That range is an estimate rather than a single measured global total, but it highlights why intercultural communication is not limited to international travel or formal diplomacy. For many people, switching languages and interpreting different cultural expectations is part of ordinary life. UNESCO, What you need to know about multilingual education
Measured student proficiency
The OECD’s PISA 2018 global competence assessment provides a measured view of how 15-year-old students performed across proficiency levels. In the overall average, 4% reached Level 5, the highest measured level, while 9% reached Level 4, 16% reached Level 3 and 21% reached Level 2. These are PISA 2018 results, not current estimates of student performance.
The highest levels varied substantially between participating systems. Singapore had the largest Level 5 share, at 22% of students, while Canada had 15%. Level 4 attainment ranged from 20% to 24% in Canada, Hong Kong (China) and Singapore. By contrast, it ranged from 0.6% to 1.7% in Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Panama, the Philippines and Thailand.
At Level 3, between 20% and 27% of students reached the level in Canada, Croatia, Greece, Hong Kong (China), Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Scotland, Singapore, Spain and Chinese Taipei. No more than 8% did so in Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Panama, the Philippines and Thailand. At Level 2, the reported range was 26% to 29% in Croatia, Latvia and Russia, compared with 9% to 15% in Indonesia, Kazakhstan and the Philippines. OECD, PISA 2018 Results (Volume VI): Are Students Ready to Thrive in an Interconnected World?
| PISA 2018 global competence measure | Share or range reported |
|---|---|
| Overall average at Level 5 | 4% |
| Overall average at Level 4 | 9% |
| Overall average at Level 3 | 16% |
| Singapore at Level 5 | 22% |
| Canada at Level 5 | 15% |
The levels describe performance on the PISA global competence framework; they do not measure every part of intercultural communication, such as conversational fluency in a particular language. They are most useful for comparing the assessment’s participating systems in its 2018 measurement period.
School activities that build communication
Students’ reported classroom experiences show that intercultural learning includes more than language lessons. Across OECD countries in PISA 2018, 76% said they learned about different cultures at school. Sixty-four percent said they learned how to solve conflicts with other people in the classroom, while 62% learned that people from different cultures can have different perspectives on issues.
Fifty-eight percent said they learned how to communicate with people from different backgrounds. Fifty-six percent participated in classroom discussions about world events, and 55% learned about the interconnectedness of countries’ economies. More interactive activities were less common: 48% analysed global issues with classmates in small groups, and 46% said teachers invited them to give and discuss personal opinions about international news.
Other reported activities reached 41% each. That was the share who said they read or watched news together during classes, and also the share who participated in events celebrating cultural diversity during the school year. Students reported engaging in about five of the ten measured intercultural and global learning activities on average across OECD countries. In Albania, Baku, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Jordan, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, students reported engaging in more than seven of the ten activities. These figures describe student reports of exposure, not proof that every activity produced a particular communication outcome. OECD, PISA 2018 Results (Volume VI)
Everyday contact across borders
Formal lessons are only one route to intercultural communication. Across OECD countries, 63% of students reported contact with people from other countries in their circle of friends in PISA 2018. The corresponding shares were 54% in their family, 53% at school and 38% in their neighbourhood.
School contact varied sharply across participating systems. The share reporting contact with people from other countries at school ranged from 70% to 78% across the highest-contact PISA participating systems. It ranged from 20% to 30% in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and Viet Nam. The school setting therefore offers very different levels of direct exposure depending on students’ location and social environment.
The four settings measure different forms of contact, so they should not be added together. A student may have international contact in a friendship circle and at school, while another may have it mainly through family. The results show the reach of these pathways, not the depth, frequency or quality of each interaction. OECD, PISA 2018 Results (Volume VI)
Equity gaps in intercultural learning
Access to global learning opportunities was not evenly distributed. Socio-economically advantaged students had more intercultural and global learning opportunities than disadvantaged students in 32 of 64 PISA participating countries and economies. This finding concerns reported opportunities, not a universal gap in every participating system.
PISA 2018 also linked grade repetition with lower self-reported measures across OECD countries. Repeating a grade was associated with a 0.16-unit decline in students’ self-efficacy regarding global issues and a 0.18-unit decline in their awareness of global issues. These are associations, so they do not establish that grade repetition caused the declines.
Teacher discrimination was reported by a smaller minority: fewer than 15% of students on average across OECD countries said they perceived discrimination by their teachers. The measure still matters for inclusive leadership and education because a low average can coexist with higher reported experiences in particular communities. OECD, PISA 2018 Results (Volume VI)
Adult foreign-language skills
Eurostat data for 2022 show a clear age difference in reported foreign-language knowledge among EU residents. At least one foreign language was reported by 84.4% of residents aged 25–34, compared with 65.0% of those aged 55–64. Among 18–24-year-olds, the share was 87.3%.
Greece illustrates the size of an age gap within one country: 87.6% of 25–34-year-olds reported knowing at least one foreign language, compared with 51.9% of 55–64-year-olds, a 35.7-percentage-point difference. This is a 2022 comparison, not a forecast of future language use.
Education and labour-market status were also associated with different reported rates. Among EU working-age adults, 90.2% of those with high educational attainment knew at least one foreign language, compared with 71.7% with medium attainment and 51.2% with low attainment. The share was 78.5% among employed adults, 65.0% among unemployed adults and 63.2% among people outside the labour force. Eurostat, Foreign language skills statistics
Foreign-language learning pathways
School systems create different routes into multilingual communication. In 2024, 6.4% of EU primary-school pupils were learning at least two foreign languages, up from 4.6% in 2014. Latvia recorded the largest increase over that period, rising by 26.7 percentage points.
At lower-secondary level, 97.6% of EU pupils were learning English as a foreign language in 2024, and 58.8% were learning at least two foreign languages. Finland had the highest lower-secondary share learning at least two, at 97.2%, while Ireland had the lowest, at 5.2%.
Upper-secondary patterns differed by programme. In 2024, 89.4% of EU upper-secondary pupils were studying English. English was studied by 96.3% of pupils in general programmes versus 81.1% in vocational programmes. Across all upper-secondary pupils, 48.9% were learning at least two foreign languages; Romania recorded the highest share, at 98.1%. Eurostat, Foreign language learning statistics
The United States provides a different household-language reference point. In the 2018–2022 American Community Survey, 78.3% of people aged five and older spoke only English at home. This ACS estimate describes language spoken at home, so it is not directly comparable with EU figures on knowing at least one foreign language. U.S. Census Bureau, Most Americans Speak Only English at Home or Speak English “Very Well”