GCSE French, German and Spanish (new specifications)

We’re delighted to announce that our second full set of sample assessment materials (SAMS) for the new GCSEs in French (8652), German (8662) and Spanish (8692) are available on our secure website Centre Services. Teachers can find these on Centre Services by following the steps below:

• log in to Centre Services
• go to 'Resources'
• select 'Assessment and training'
• click 'French', ‘German’ or ‘Spanish’
• click ‘GCSE’
• select specification ‘8652 FRENCH’, ‘8662 GERMAN’ or ‘8692 SPANISH’
• under ‘Category’ select ‘Assessment material’
• under 'Resource type', select ‘Sample assessment materials’
• select 'Newest first' from the drop down list.

The second set of sample papers are in addition to the Ofqual accredited sample assessments available on our French, German and Spanish web pages and are intended for teachers to use in their Year 11 mock exams.

This will be the last full set of sample papers available before the 2026 exams, so we’d advise that schools and colleges keep this second full set of sample assessments secure in Centre Services for their final Year 11 mock exams in 2025/26.

Additional practice questions

We’ve also created some additional practice questions at both Foundation and Higher tier to support teachers with preparing their learners for the new assessment tasks. The additional practice questions for each language are available in Centre Services – to access these follow the same steps above for the Sample assessment materials but select ‘Practice tests’ under ‘Resource type’. These additional practice questions include additional dictation (Paper 1), read aloud (Paper 2), inference task (Paper 3), translation (Paper 3 and 4) and Foundation tier question 3 grammar task (Paper 4).

We’re keeping the new sample assessment material and additional practice questions on Centre Services to allow schools to manage when their learners use these materials. Please keep them secure and only use these within your school or classroom, so other teachers can continue to use them as unseen papers, mocks and for other internal assessments. Do not upload them on any website, social media platform or video sharing site.
 

Coming soon: new training and resources

We’ve a range of other support and training for the new GCSE French, German and Spanish specifications planned for release in the autumn and spring terms 2024/5.

Available now

• Getting to grips with the new speaking test – access our free training for conduct of the speaking tests. This new online training is available to support teachers in understanding the new assessment criteria and how to conduct the new MFL speaking tests with confidence, alongside providing the first draft of the Instructions for the conduct of the exams document. Some of our events do get booked up quickly, so please add your name to the waiting list, as further capacity is likely to become available. If you’re unable to attend any of the live events, an on-demand recording with all the supporting resources will be made available as soon as possible after the final event in January 2025.

Coming soon

• Mark scheme guidance and application (eLearning) – on-demand training modules for each paper to practise marking for the new specifications, including detailed commentaries from senior examiners. Available to book on our website in the coming weeks.
• Tiering guide – a guide to determine tiering decisions for GCSE languages.
• Sample lesson plans (6 per language) focussing on areas where there’s an opportunity to explore equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Available spring term 2025.

You can find all the support and resources available for French, German and Spanish on the planning, teaching and assessment tabs on our qualifications pages.

If you have any questions about our AQA languages qualifications, please get in touch. We’ll be pleased to support you in any way we can.

Email: mfl@aqa.org.uk
Tel: 01423 534 381 8am–5pm Monday to Friday