Inquiry as languages numbers fall again

AN INVESTIGATION is to be launched into foreign languages following another slump in the number of young people studying the subject at A-level, it has been announced.

Exam board chiefs said that they had decided to look into the issue following yearly falls in entries for subjects including German and French.

The inquiry is likely to look into areas such as the types of students who choose to study a language, their achievements and why relatively few languages students are awarded a top grade, it was suggested.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The move comes as the latest A-level results showed a further drop in the numbers taking foreign languages.

Some 11,272 people took French this year, down 9.9 per cent on last year, while 4,242 people were entered for German, an 11.1 per cent drop. There were 9,087 entries for other modern foreign languages, 49 fewer than last year.

But Spanish bucked the trend, with a 4.1 per cent increase in entries.

Andrew Hall, chief executive of the AQA exam board, said that languages are a “problem”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“The entry levels are low, but Spanish this year is bucking the trend – I guess it is not surprising because Spanish is becoming a more popular language given how widely it is spoken in the world,” he said.

“But the outcomes vary. One of the things that is said often is that it is harder to get an A* or an A in languages. I am pretty clear, and I think that my colleagues are, that the process is no different to other subjects.” He added: “This year the number of students who got an A* in French, Spanish and German was 6.9 per cent and 8.4 per cent in sciences. But then look at what happens with the grades A* and A, 38.2 per cent of students get one of the top two grades in languages then only 30.7 per cent in sciences.”

England’s main three exam boards – AQA, OCR and Edexcel – have “taken a view that there has been enough comments and discussion that the awarding bodies want to take a step back and look at what the drivers are in take-up of languages,” Mr Hall said. Technical teams from each of the awarding bodies are expected to work together on the project.

Overall, modern foreign languages now account for just 3.8 per cent of UK A-level entries, compared with 4.2 per cent five years ago.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mr Hall later said: “We’ve reached the point where enough is enough, let’s actually use our expertise. We’ve stood at several events and said we’re concerned about languages.

“So what we want to do is use all the information we’ve got to look at the type of students that are entering, what is their prior background, are we getting a different cohort mix, look at what the achievements are, look at the awarding and the grading between the AS-level and the A2, look at their performance at GCSE.”

England’s exams regulator has already announced plans to examine foreign languages grading. In its corporate plan, Ofqual warned that too few teenagers are gaining the very best grades in foreign languages at A-level. It said relatively few A* grades are being awarded in subjects such as Spanish, French and German, compared with other subjects.

Related topics: