Today’s (11 May 2019) Guardian reports concerns raised by
representatives from higher education about grading standards in
modern foreign languages, and our work to maintain these. We take
seriously these concerns and are currently conducting a
comprehensive review of grading standards in GCSE French, German
and Spanish. We are looking at statistical evidence, contextual
data including trends in the numbers taking these subjects,
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Today’s (11 May 2019) Guardian reports concerns raised by
representatives from higher education about grading
standards in modern foreign languages, and our work to
maintain these. We take seriously these concerns and are
currently conducting a comprehensive review of grading
standards in GCSE French, German and Spanish. We are
looking at statistical evidence, contextual data including
trends in the numbers taking these subjects, and
considering the quality of students’ work through looking
at how GCSE grades relate to the Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages (CEFR), to see if there is
compelling case for an adjustment to grading standards in
these subjects. We are talking to subject experts and other
stakeholders and we welcome thoughts and contributions. We
are due to report on this work in the autumn. We will
report any feedback about subject content to the Department
for Education, which is responsible for this.
Our work on inter-subject comparability to date:
- We published in
November the outcome of an extensive research
programme into the comparability of MFL (and science)
subjects at A levelwhich considered a broad range
of sources of evidence. This included a comprehensive
programme of research looking at factors such as
student motivation and subject choices, and
engagement with the broadest possible range of
interested parties, including Ofqual’s Standards
Advisory Group, higher education, subject experts and
teachers
- We judged the evidence against 4 criteria:
- statistical measures of subject difficulty show
evidence of persistent grading severity over
several years
- persuasive evidence of the potential
detrimental impact caused by severe grading on
those who use the qualification, and on society at
large, over several years
- evidence which shows that those who use the
qualification and those responsible for maintaining
the grading standard judge an adjustment to be
acceptable
- likely benefit to users of the qualification
and society as a whole from a change to grading
standards must outweigh any potential negative
effects
- We set these criteria to reflect our view that any
adjustment to grading standards must be informed by a
wide range of factors
- Statistical evidence is an important consideration
in our view, but it has limitations. For example,
simple interpretations of subject difficulty based on
comparisons of results do not take into account student
motivation or their ability in that subject
- As such, it would be inappropriate to make
adjustments to grading standards by looking at such
statistics in isolation or in limited combinations
- Nor is it the case that numbers of students
studying subjects perceived to be more difficult than
others are falling; entries for some A level science
subjects, for example, have increased over the past 10
years
- That’s why we believe it is essential to take a
broad range of information into account before taking
any decision
- Our criteria were developed with input from our
Standards Advisory Group, which comprises experts from
across the educational community, and they allow us to
make consistent and secure judgements in all
circumstances. This is essential for the acceptability
of any change to those who rely on qualifications and
for public confidence
- While we did not find a compelling case to adjust
grading standards in the A level subjects we reviewed,
we did recognise that perceived grading severity
undermines confidence and we committed to working with
the exam boards to ensure that these subjects do not
become statistically more severely graded in the future
- There may be many reasons why students are choosing
to take, and schools are opting to offer, one subject –
or modern foreign language (MFL) - over
another. Research
conducted by Cuff (2017), found (in a qualitative
survey of 112 students) that perceptions of
difficulty were not the main basis of their
decisions and instead their choices were
focussed more upon enjoyment and usefulness
- We looked at the issue of native speakers in
detail, quantified the impact we judged they were
having and made an adjustment to grade standards that
was then built into future awards
- We are also undertaking
work to review the effectiveness of the reformed MFL
GCSEs. As part of this, we have spoken to a
number of MFL teachers - they have told us that
reformed GCSE and A level question papers assessing
writing are fair. They also felt that the speaking
assessments were better than those of the legacy
qualifications
- We are aware of statistical evidence that suggests
that GCSE MFL subjects may be more severely graded than
many others. As we explained in detail in relation to
our work at A level, given the limitations inherent in
these statistical approaches, we do not believe that
such evidence on its own is strong enough to justify a
change to grading standards. As such, our work at GCSE
will consider these statistics but also a wide range of
other evidence, including the quality of students’ work
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