GCSE MFL specification redevelopment – feedback sessions

In January 2022 the Department for Education (DfE) confirmed changes to GCSE French, German and Spanish following its public consultation in spring 2021, and Ofqual published a response to this consultation.

Exam boards are being asked to redevelop these qualifications for first teaching from September 2024, with first exams in 2026.

In February we invited you to tell us what you’d like to see from our redeveloped MFL specifications in our survey, and we’ve had lots of valuable feedback. We’re in the process of developing these new GCSE qualifications to be ready for first teaching in 2024 and we’re hosting events to hear your feedback.

Our team will be hosting after-school feedback sessions in June and July for MFL teachers to look at our redeveloped qualifications. As part of this testing, we’ll share proposed structures and concepts for our new assessments. We’ll be using French materials as our examples, giving you the chance to have your say on our draft GCSE specification, sample papers and mark schemes.

These sample papers and mark schemes will be for our French specification, in line with Ofqual’s timeline for accreditation, but the sessions will also be useful for teachers of German and Spanish, who are encouraged to take part and give feedback too. We’ll be asking for feedback on German and Spanish specifically in more feedback sessions during the autumn term.

You can book your place now at one of our June and July events – we look forward to meeting you and hearing what you have say about our proposed new specifications and assessment materials. If you can’t find a suitable event this time, don’t worry, we’ll be holding more feedback events for German and Spanish in the autumn.

As this will be a significant change to the specifications and assessments, we want to work closely with our teachers, our senior associates and key stakeholders throughout the redevelopment process to get your feedback, to ensure our new specifications meet the needs of you and your students.