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Written question asked by Baroness Coussins (Crossbench) on Monday, 18 April 2016, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 3 May 2016. It was answered by Lord Nash (Conservative) on Tuesday, 3 May 2016 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Languages: Assessments

Question

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in discussions with examination boards about retaining accreditation routes for lesser-taught languages at GCSE and A-level.

Answer

Government action has resulted in GCSEs and A levels in a range of community languages being continued, to ensure young people can carry on studying a diverse range of foreign languages.

This follows a Government commitment in 2015 to protect a number of language GCSEs and A levels after the exam boards announced that from 2017 they would be withdrawing several courses.

Since then the Government has worked with Ofqual and the exam boards and we have been successful in securing most of the less-taught languages at GCSE and A level for future years. In addition to Chinese, Italian and Russian, the languages now secure are Arabic, Bengali, Biblical Hebrew, Modern Greek, Gujarati, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Panjabi, Polish, Portuguese, Turkish and Urdu.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
HL7735
Session
2015-16
Subjects
Assessments Languages GCSE GCE A-level
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk