Industry News
Language oral exams are set to stay
Posted on 18th February 2008
The notion that oral exams for language GCSEs are about to be scrapped is "ridiculous", schools minister Jim Knight has said.
According to the BBC Mr Knight revealed that the one-off speaking exam is likely to be replaced with continuous controlled classroom assessment.
The Sunday Telegraph whipped up a controversy at the weekend after it reported that oral exams were to be axed because they are "too stressful" for pupils.
England's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is now saying that, on the contrary, it intends to make oral assessments of languages more rigorous following a report which said current oral exams are not good tests of a students' knowledge.
The teaching of languages in schools has come under fire recently, particularly after the government changed the law to allow schools to opt out of sitting pupils for language GCSEs altogether.
Despite only accounting for seven per cent of all GCSE candidates, independent school pupils now make up 15 per cent of entries to GCSE French, 20 per cent for Spanish and 21 per cent for GCSE Italian exams, the Telegraph reported.
Continuing this focus on languages from the private school sector, the Girls School Association is pushing for changes in the marking system for languages such as Hindi, Mandarin and Arabic so that a pupils' mother tongue is taken into account, in order to ensure that the system is fair.