A report in the Sunday Telegraph had suggested the exams watchdog was planning Call for prison bugging inquiry ...
Fifth of schools below par ...
Blackstone 'eyes rival Rio bid' ...
UK report on Afghan crash due ...
UK schools slip down global table ... to drop orals because they were supposedly "too stressful".

England's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said it was making the oral assessment of languages more rigorous.

It plans to follow a report which said current orals are not good tests.

Lord Dearing, who was commissioned by the government to look at modern language teaching, affirmed in his review the importance of speaking and listening in language GCSEs.

These skills should make up half of the marks for the qualification, Lord Dearing said.

But he also warned that the stress of oral exams might deter youngsters from taking languages.

Mr Knight said: "It is ridiculous to suggest that a GCSE in a modern foreign language would be awarded without any kind of oral assessment.

"Any proposals must be designed to improve the confidence and competence of young people at speaking foreign languages."

He said the Dearing Review suggested that continuous speaking assessment of pupils in controlled conditions was a better way of finding out which grade pupils were at than one "hit or miss" exam.

"Those who would like to put forward dumbing down arguments seem to be misguided or misinformed in this case," he added.

'Not dumbing down'

In his report, Lord Dearing said: "It is interesting that when people spoke about the oral test, that however long ago it may have been, it is often remembered as a stressful experience," he wrote.

"We therefore proposed that these parts of the examination should be over a period through moderated teacher assessment."

Lord Dearing emphasised that any change should not weaken the "validity of the assessment".

The QCA, which is publishing a report on the issue on Wednesday, said it was looking at changing the emphasis of how the oral part of modern languages are assessed.

"It's changing the way it's done, not getting rid of it or dumbing it down.

"In fact, we will see a more rigorous assessment."

Currently GCSE oral tests are carried out by teachers, recorded and sent to external examiners for marking.

Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove told the Sunday Telegraph pupils were being told they could pass GCSE languages without speaking them.

"Once again, this government is moving the goalposts on examinations and instead of proper rigour we have got a watering down of standards."

Lord Dearing's report was accepted by the then Education Secretary Alan Johnson in March 2007.

A sharp fall in students taking language GCSEs had prompted the review.

The drop came after the government ended compulsory modern languages up to the age of 16 in 2004.

(BBC)

<< Back