Reforming GCSEs in Modern Foreign and Ancient Languages AQA submission to the Ofqual consultation 23 May 2014 Assessing modern foreign language GCSEs 1. Reading skills should be assessed using exams set and marked by the exam boards. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Reading is a skill which is most suitable for assessment via an externally set and marked examination. 2. Writing skills should be assessed using exams set and marked by the exam boards. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? We fully support the reintroduction of an externally set and marked Writing examination. The use of controlled assessment in Writing could raise the possibility of some students AQA Education (AQA) is a registered charity (number 1073334) and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (number 3644723). Our registered address is AQA, Devas Street, Manchester M15 6EX.
attempting to memorise and reproduce pre-learned work, placing risk on the validity of the assessment. An externally set exam ensures that students demonstrate their ability to respond to an unseen stimulus and their ability to manipulate language. 3. Listening skills should be assessed using exams set and marked by the exam boards. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Listening is a skill which is most suitable for assessment via an externally set and marked examination. For students, Listening is a challenging skill and an externally set exam for Listening as a discrete skill is more suitable than a mixed-skill assessment. 4. Speaking skills should be assessed by non-exam assessments, using tasks set and marked by the exam board. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? We fully support the reintroduction of an externally set and marked Speaking examination. We also support the proposal for teachers to conduct the tests as it would not be practical for exam boards to offer visiting examiners because of the large numbers of students taking these qualifications. The use of controlled assessment in Speaking could raise the possibility of some students attempting to memorise and reproduce pre-learned work, placing risk on the validity of the assessment. An externally set exam ensures that students demonstrate Page 2 of 11
their ability to respond to an unseen stimulus and demonstrate their ability to respond spontaneously and manipulate language. 5. What considerations need to be taken into account to make sure students speaking skills are assessed in a way that is: a) valid... b) reliable, and... c) fair?... We believe there should be an unseen element to the test and appropriate security will be in place to ensure that the tests are secure. The unseen stimulus material should be randomised to ensure validity. Awarding bodies should agree common industry standards on length of assessments, preparation and supervision requirements. All unseen stimulus material should be developed by senior examiners to ensure it is comparable within a series and across subsequent series. Tests should be designed to reward genuine spontaneous conversation. All student tests should be recorded and sent for external marking. There should be rigorous monitoring of marking carried out to ensure consistency of marking by the teams of examiners. 6. How might any aspects of the proposed assessment requirements impact on: a) the costs, and.... Although awarding bodies will be required to employ examiners who will mark every test rather than moderators who mark a sample, teachers will no longer be required to mark the tasks. In addition, students will have to complete one Speaking assessment, rather than two Page 3 of 11
as at present, which will mean that there will be a reduction in the resources required by schools for these subjects. Both of these features will lead to a significant increase in the running costs of these qualifications. It is likely that these costs will need to be passed on. b) likely take-up of new modern foreign language GCSEs?.... The lower level of resourcing required by schools may encourage take-up of these subjects. However, we believe that changes to the curriculum in which more questions are asked in the foreign language will potentially reduce take-up. 7. The outcome of the speaking component should contribute to a student s overall grade. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Speaking is central to the learning of a language and the use of a language for employment and later in life is a key driver for students to opt for languages. If robust moderation procedures are put in place, it would be appropriate for the Speaking component to contribute to the overall grade. Tiering of modern foreign language GCSEs 8. All assessments (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in new modern foreign language GCSEs should be tiered. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Page 4 of 11
For an assessment to be optimal, in terms of validity and reliability, it should be targeted around the level of ability of the students who are sitting it. Students would find it demoralising to be faced with questions which a significant number of them they would find very hard. For Listening and Reading, lower-ability students would not be able to access a significant part of an untiered test. Conversely, many students would not be appropriately challenged by some of the questions in an untiered paper and parts of the test would fail to offer many students the chance to demonstrate to the full the skills which they had developed. In the Writing test it would be impossible to set a translation suitable for students across the full grade range. In the Speaking test, although it would be possible to set some parts of the assessment which would be suitable for the full grade range, restricting the assessment entirely to tasks of this nature would compromise validity and in particular the demand of the assessment for the highest-performing students. 9. All available new modern foreign language GCSEs should be tiered. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? ( ) Strongly disagree The entry profiles for the low-entry languages are significantly different from the entry profiles for the mainstream languages (French, German and Spanish). Moreover, while we wish to make these mainstream languages accessible to a wide range of ability, students who take the low-entry languages generally have some existing connection with the language (e.g. relatives or friends who are native speakers), so the arguments in favour of tiering quoted in our response to Question 8 do not apply. We therefore recommend that the low-entry languages should not be tiered. Page 5 of 11
New GCSEs in low-entry languages should not be tiered. Data from the low-entry AQA GCSEs with tiered Listening and Reading show that only a small proportion of the entry takes both Listening and Reading at Foundation Tier. The percentages in 2013 were: Panjabi 3.7%; Bengali 13.2%; Chinese 4.7%; Urdu 22%. Furthermore, of the students who did take the Foundation Tier paper for Listening and/or Reading, the percentage gaining grade C or above was over 20% for every language, which suggests that these students could in fact have been successful in a Higher Tier paper. Students entering for low-entry languages are often not taught formally in a school or college and do not have a teacher who can make an informed decision on tier of entry. Only 8% of AQA s Polish entry and 37% of its Panjabi entry in 2013 was from centres with over 100 entries for the subject. This means there is a risk of students being entered inappropriately for Foundation Tier which in turn could lead to their aspirations being capped. Tiered examinations are more costly for exam boards and a requirement for low-entry languages to be tiered is likely to threaten future provision. All exam boards currently offer untiered small-entry language qualifications with the approval of the regulator. 10. Students should be required to enter for either higher- or foundation-tier assessments but not a combination of the two. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? ( ) Agree Although it is true that students performance can vary across skills, data from the previous specification, when we had tiered exams in all skills, show that most students sat the test at the same tier in Listening and Reading and did the untiered writing coursework. For GCSE French, only 9% of the AQA entry sat Foundation Listening with Higher Reading in 2010, for example, and less than 2% sat Higher Listening with Foundation Reading. Allowing students to mix tiers would necessitate the use of uniform marks for aggregation. Technically this would be a drawback, because conversion of raw marks to uniform marks is liable to compress the marks in some parts of the range and magnify them in other parts, with the consequence that marks may have different value in different parts of the range and compensation between the components may be distorted. Aggregation of the raw marks (after scaling, if necessary, to provide the correct weightings) avoids any distortion and is also more transparent to centres and students. Page 6 of 11
11. For the listening, reading and writing assessments 20 per cent of marks, and for speaking 50 per cent of marks, should be allocated to questions or tasks that are common in any series to both the foundation and higher tier assessments. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? ( ) Agree This appears to be appropriate in terms of common questions or tasks. 12. Do you have any further comments on the tiering of modern foreign language GCSEs? We have nothing further to add. Availability of modern foreign language GCSEs 15. Modern foreign language GCSEs in a wide range of languages should be available in the future. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? ( ) Agree The inclusion of languages in the Department for Education s English Baccalaureate performance measure as well as the compulsory learning of languages in primary schools indicates support from Government for the study of languages and recognition of their economic and inherent educational value. Reports of surveys by CBI, British Chambers of Commerce and British Council similarly reference the need for improved language skills in order to benefit the UK s trade, prosperity and influence. AQA is supportive of that aim. Page 7 of 11
16. Modern foreign language GCSEs for which there is low demand should be available in the future. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? ( ) Don t know/no opinion AQA is supportive of the principle that GCSEs should be available in a variety of languages. However, the changes being proposed in this consultation to assessment models make the provision of low-entry MFLs very difficult to guarantee. Quite rightly, low-entry MFLs would be subject to the same regulation as higher volume qualifications. However, it is more difficult to recruit and retain examining personnel in low-entry specialist subjects, which increases the risk of exam boards not being able consistently to meet delivery and/or quality of marking objectives, and therefore greater risk of exposure to regulatory actions. The regulatory burden and risks associated with providing low-entry languages could therefore make them unviable for awarding bodies to offer in the future. 17. Modern foreign language GCSEs should be available for students who are existing users of the language. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? ( ) Strongly disagree It is difficult to identify and define existing user of the language is this someone who has spoken the language since earliest childhood (source: OED) or is this someone who has a parent who is the speaker of the language, for example? Attempts to identify native speakers of a language in the past for research purposes have proved problematic in that they were difficult to identify/define for the reasons outlined above. For the main languages, predictions based on KS2 already prevent such candidates having an unintended effect on the results. For low-entry languages, having two qualifications for Page 8 of 11
each language would dilute the entry even further and increase running costs for exam boards significantly, potentially threatening the viability and therefore availability of these languages. 18. In your opinion would schools and colleges be willing to pay a higher fee to enter students for modern foreign language GCSEs for which there is a lower demand? Yes/No Schools may be willing to pay a higher entry fee but this would not necessarily be sufficient to cover the running costs for low-entry qualifications. 19. What, if any, steps do you think Ofqual should take to secure the availability of GCSEs in a range of modern foreign languages? It is important to recognise the current commercial climate in which exam boards are operating and that if we were required to offer the same model in these low-volume MFLs, it is unlikely that it would be possible to maintain the current provision. We do feel that consideration could be given to allowing some flexibility in the assessment structure of qualifications in these low-volume languages. For example, students tend to perform very well in the Listening and Speaking assessments which does call into question whether or not assessments in these skills discriminate sufficiently, particularly amongst native speakers. An assessment model which focused on Reading and Writing skills could be more viable. Currently at A-level, a two-unit assessment model was agreed by the regulator for low-volume languages which focuses on the skills of Reading and Writing and this model has operated successfully for a number of years, setting a helpful precedent and allowing us to offer a wider provision in a way which is more sustainable. Impact of proposed changes on students who share protected characteristics 22. A disabled student should obtain an exemption for no more than 40 per cent of the available marks for a modern foreign language GCSE. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? ( ) Agree Page 9 of 11
AQA supports the argument that if a student is exempted from parts of the qualification that constitute more than 40 per cent of the total marks available for a qualification, then the qualification cannot be said to give a reliable indication of a student s knowledge, skills and understanding. This assumes that the proposal to set the percentage of marks in new GCSEs in modern foreign languages to Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing at 25 per cent each is adopted. 23. We have identified a number of ways the proposed requirements for new GCSEs in modern foreign languages may impact (positively and negatively) on persons who share a protected characteristic. Are there any other potential impacts we have not identified? Yes/No, If yes, what are they?.. AQA believes that other stakeholders are better placed to identify potential equality impacts. 25. Are there any additional steps we could take to mitigate any negative impact resulting from these proposals on persons who share a protected characteristic? Yes/No,.. AQA believes that other stakeholders are better placed to identify any actions required. Regulatory impact 26. Do any of the proposals or options being considered have financial or wider resource consequences, positive or negative, for: Schools Exam boards Others Yes/no Yes/no Yes/no Page 10 of 11
Please explain your response In our response to Question 6 above, we noted that the proposed assessment requirements would remove teacher assessment but would increase the costs to exam boards of running language qualifications. In our response to Question 16 above, we noted that the regulatory burden and risks associated with providing low-entry languages could make them unviable for exam boards to offer in the future. Page 11 of 11