Plan to drop oral exams in languages revealed

Feb 18 2008

Oral tests look set to be dropped from GCSE language exams because they are “too stressful”, it emerged today.

In a report next week, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority is likely to accept recommendations from last year’s review of language teaching by Lord Dearing, who said the short oral exams should be replaced by assessment by teachers over a longer period.

Lord Dearing’s report, which was accepted by then-Education Secretary Alan Johnson last March, said that it was right that speaking and listening should account for half of the marks in a language GCSE.

But he said the format of brief orals - while accurate in assessing performance on the day - was not a reliable guide to students’ ability.

The stress of the oral exam may also be a contributory factor in putting youngsters off studying languages, he said.

A QCA spokeswoman this evening declined to confirm a Sunday Telegraph report that the oral assessment report being published in the coming week would sound the death knell for the traditional spoken language test.

But she said the QCA report followed on from Lord Dearing’s recommendations which were accepted in full by the Government.

In his report, Lord Dearing wrote: “We... proposed a new approach to the assessment of speaking and listening, which rightly account for half the marks in the GCSE, on the grounds that the present method is too stressful and too short to be a reliable way of assessing what the candidates can do.

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

“We recognise that any change has to be made in a way that does not weaken the validity of the assessment, and concerns have been expressed to us about that. But that has to be balanced against the risk that a test that is often highly stressful and over a short period, whilst accurate in its awards against performance on the day, is not a reliable test of the candidates’ capability.”

Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove told the Sunday Telegraph: “After being told they could get a pass without writing a word in a foreign language, now pupils are being told they can pass without speaking it.

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

Former chief inspector of schools Chris Woodhead rejected the idea of abolishing oral examinations.

“I think it’s predictable but it’s stupid. It’s predictable because it’s another example of the current fashion for removing from our examination system anything that students ... find stressful, don’t like, or find too demanding,” he said.

“And it’s stupid because if one is wanting to know if someone has mastered a foreign language in any context, then clearly the student has got to be able to speak that language in any context.”

He also rejected suggestions that an A-grade student might “crumble” under the pressure of an oral and “blow it”, and he dismissed continuous assessment as “completely unrealistic”.

He said: “How do we know that one teacher’s assessment is the same as another teacher’s assessment. Is it fair?”

He added: “We’ve got to recognise that life is stressful and students have got to perform at a given moment because the alternative cannot simply be relied upon.”

And he concluded: “I think the simplest, the clearest, the cleanest, the fairest way of assessing a student’s performance has to be the final examination at the end of the course.

“And in the case of the modern foreign language, the ability to speak that language is crucial, so yes, that competence has to be tested in an oral at the end of the exam.”

But David Laws, Liberal Democrat Spokesman for Children, Schools and Families, criticised the proposals.

He said: “It is a ludicrous idea that a spoken test should not be a crucial part of modern language exams at GCSE.

“If the Government is going to drop spoken tests on the basis of the stress they supposedly cause, the credibility of our qualifications system will be completely undermined.

“The Government has already massively eroded the teaching of modern languages in England, with less than half of pupils now taking these subjects.

“The last thing that we need is to weaken students’ ability to actually speak the languages taught."

Minister for Schools and Learners, Jim 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.

“The Dearing Review suggested that continuous speaking assessment of pupils in controlled conditions is a better way of finding out which grade pupils are at than one hit or miss exam at the end of the course.

“Those who would like to put forward dumbing down arguments seem to be misguided or misinformed in this case.”