Most schoolchildren try their hand at learning one or two languages during their school years, but these are usually limited to French, German or Spanish.

But at Parliament Hill School, Highgate Road, teenagers got the chance to start mastering five rarely-taught tongues to encourage them to study languages at university.

Pupils were given a taster in Dutch, Finnish, Polish, Romanian and Russian and are now able to say hallo, terve, czesc, buna and zdravstvujtye, as well as several other common phrases.

Language teachers from University College London (UCL), Bloomsbury, were invited by the school to take classes to celebrate the European Day of Languages last Thursday. The taster sessions were also accompanied by a lesson exploring the positives of studying unusual languages, such as a high employability rate and opportunities to study abroad.

Research Associate at UCL, Terry King, who used to teach at Parliament Hill School, said: “Few pupils and parents realise the importance of languages to British business and that the most employable graduates, after qualified doctors and teachers, are language graduates.”