Subject-level conditions and guidance for new French, German and Spanish GCSEs
Applies to England
Read the full outcome
Detail of outcome
Most of the changes made to the proposals on which Ofqual consulted represent refinements to clarify the wording of the conditions, requirements and guidance, rather than changes of substance.
In a few instances, we have amended the conditions, requirements and guidance to ensure that the regulatory approach will best support the delivery of the qualifications, or to ensure the requirements accurately reflect the content requirements.
Feedback received
Detail of feedback received
Technical consultations on proposed regulations usually attract fewer public (non-exam board) respondents than assessment policy consultations and typically include little contextual information. However, given the level of public interest in the revisions to GCSE French, German and Spanish we included a more detailed description of the proposals to explain them to a wider audience.
We received 88 responses, with the majority being from the teaching community.
15 responses represented the views of organisations:
- 8 responses from a school, college or teacher representative group
- 3 responses from an awarding body or exam board
- 2 responses from a subject association or learned society
- 1 response from a union
- 1 other response
The other 73 were responses from individuals:
- 60 responses from teachers responding in a personal capacity
- 5 responses from individuals from academy chains
- 3 responses from members of a senior leadership team (SLT)
- 1 response from a consultant
- 1 response from a parent or carer
- 1 response from a private training provider
- 1 response from a school or college
- 1 other response
No responses were received from students, which was not unexpected given the detailed regulatory focus of the proposals. Almost all of the respondents were based in England, with the only exceptions being 1 from Scotland and 2 from Wales.
We received responses from the three exam boards that currently offer GCSEs in French, German and Spanish.
We were pleased to receive these responses and thank everyone who took the time to respond. We recognise that respondents to this consultation were self-selecting, so the responses are not necessarily representative of the general public or any specific group.
Original consultation
Consultation description
Audience
This consultation is open to anyone who may wish to make representation but may be of most interest to:
- awarding organisations which offer GCSEs in French, German or Spanish
- teachers of GCSE French, German or Spanish
- schools, colleges and other exam centres
- students
New subject content
In November 2019, the Department for Education (DfE) announced that it would be convening an independent expert panel to develop potential changes to the subject content for GCSE French, German and Spanish. The proposed subject content was subject to a 10-week public consultation between March 2021 and May 2021.
In January 2022, following review of the consultation responses and wider stakeholder feedback, DfE published the new GCSE French, German and Spanish subject content.
DfE also confirmed that the new qualifications will be available for first teaching from September 2024, with first assessments in summer 2026.
Assessment arrangements
Ofqual reviewed the requirements for assessing the proposed new content, which the exam boards offering GCSE qualifications in French, German and Spanish must follow. We published a consultation seeking views on our assessment proposals at the same time as the DfE consulted on its proposed subject content.
Also in January 2022, having considered the responses to our public consultation, we confirmed that we had decided to implement our proposals. This means that the arrangements for assessing the revised GCSEs in French, German and Spanish will be based on:
- revised assessment objectives (AOs), which set out the percentage of qualification marks that must be awarded for each aspect of assessment
- continued use of tiered assessments, requiring students to be entered to a single tier across all assessments
- continued use of non-exam assessment (NEA) to focus on the assessment of speaking skills, which make up 25% of the total marks for the qualification
This consultation
This consultation on the proposed subject level conditions and guidance (SLC&G), covers the regulatory requirements that must be followed in all new GCSE qualifications in French, German and Spanish.
Documents
Updates to this page
Published 22 March 2022Last updated 14 June 2022 + show all updates
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Added outcome of consultation and analysis of responses
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First published.