Children are finding foreign languages so stressful that they are being medically signed off from the classes, a conference heard.

Pupils are coming to school with a GP’s note explaining that they must be excused from learning languages because it is causing them extreme anxiety, delegates at the National Association of Headteachers’ (NAHT) annual conference were told.

Rob Campbell, NAHT’s chair of the secondary council, said that parents producing doctors’ notes as a way to get their children out of language classes is an “increasingly common occurrence”.

“Schools find that children studying GCSEs get predicted grades and it can be common that the weaker subject of theirs is languages,” he said.

Rather than “face the prospect of doing badly”, parents put “considerable pressure” on schools to withdraw their children from the classes by producing a doctor’s note.

Mr Campbell, who is the CEO of Morris Education Trust in Cambridgeshire, said this has happened at schools in his own multi-academy trust, as well as others in the NAHT secondary group.

“In some cases, that might just be kids don’t want to do it because they don’t want do it, and it’s pester power,” he said.