11 Plus Exams Forum

We're just finalizing DS's GCSE options. So as a final sanity check last night I was looking at the school's GCSE results for the past two years. I was really concerned about the school's Spanish ( well for MFL) results for the past two years only 60ish percent of pupils taking Spanish got an A to C grade.

I was really surprised considering the way in the school sells MFL's , One year of poor results is just a blip, but two years is looking like a pattern, so I'm wondering if it's just DS's school or are nationally results in MFL's much lower than those in other subjects ?

I'm up at the school later today for a options meeting with a senior member of staff so I'll be asking a few questions.

I find these charts useful for seeing how many kids get which grade by subject : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/educa ... panish.stm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

appreciate they are 2011 but suspect last year was not hugely different

You can download subject by subject data from the link here
Nationally in 2012 A*-C in Spanish was 74%, 2011 74.9%

MFL got a lot harder with the 2011 exam. There is an increased emphasis on writing and speaking, now 30% each as opposed to 25%. These are the 'active' exams rather than the reading and listening which test the passive skills. This means an enormous amount of effort needs to be put into the controlled assessments and these take up a lot of teaching time.

It's an absolute joke really. Killed teaching for me .

I really noticed the difference between 2010 and 2011 with my DC. No controlled assessment for French who sat 3 exams and had an oral separately vs endless controlled assessment for German that included A level grammar.