According to the Independent UK, enrollment for science is going up presumably to meet demand for an increasingly technical world.

Results day statistics released by the Joint Council for Qualifications showed physics, biology and chemistry are increasingly popular, and the proportion of students getting higher grades is also rising.

But the academic purists, alas, are left with dwindling populations in their language classrooms.

But today’s figures showed a failure to halt the slide in those choosing to study French and German.

French candidates fell 3.4% to 13,850 and just 5,548 students took German, down 3.7%.

Spanish continued to rise in popularity with candidates up 4% to 7,629, but the rise could not prevent overall modern language entries dropping 2.7% to 34,397 this year, equivalent to around 955 fewer candidates.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, described it as a "disastrous decline".

Oh, boo-hoo. Maybe a good dose of American-style teacher unionism can cure that. Maybe then those pesky parents will stop trying to influence their own kids to be over-achievers.