A new GCSE intended to improve the way we teach. And the new Photo Card task.

 In the 1990s, teaching languages sometimes seemed to be about teaching pupils a collection of things they could say. And the exam reflected this. The speaking exam had transactional role plays, phrasebook style. And personal questions, again to be answered off pat with a whole sentence response to a question, inserting some personal detail into a formulaic response. Writing was a collection of a few sentences as a postcard home giving a few details.

In the 2000s, coursework gave the scaffolding of being able to use your resources, but introduced much higher demands in terms of constructing your own answers, based on opinions, reasons, and examples in past and future.

In the 2010s, the disastrous Controlled Assessment GCSE, with the markscheme's emphasis on amount of information and variety of language, led to rote learning of fancy answers to be delivered off pat multiple times until you "got the grade you deserved" in order to avoid your teachers' school being taken over by an Academy Chain that would absolutely make sure you did.

From 2018 to 2025, we had a GCSE where the number of topics meant it was just about possible you could learn answers by rote, but it wasn't actively incentivised. In terms of speaking and writing, it was a huge relief after the disastrous Controlled Assessment years.

So clearly we have seen changes to language teaching in response to different GCSE formulae. And now we have a new GCSE that was explicitly introduced to push us to teach "better". I wonder how it's going?

To simplify things, I would say the main thrust of the new GCSE was to make sure that pupils were responding to unknown questions and prompts, to make sure they were being tested on their ability to apply their knowledge and understanding of the language, rather than memorised answers.

I am all in favour of spontaneous improvised answers which show off your ability to deploy a core repertoire across topics.

My pupils basically start Spanish in Year 10. This really focuses us on the accumulation of a repertoire that we can deploy and how we transfer this from topic to topic. I recently wrote a post on how this also was being transferred to the Photo Card task in the speaking exam. How, with some tweaks, the body of knowledge they have acquired for the Conversation topics, can be deployed to talk about what people are doing in the photo.

At the end of that post, I also hinted at the suspicion that this is NOT going to be what is incentivised by the markscheme. Since then, I have watched the AQA guidance webinars and spoken to colleagues and to AQA. And my suspicions were correct.

The photo card is going to be marked for amount of clear information. And the amount is defined as 9 pieces of information for Foundation Tier and 15 pieces of information at Higher Tier, in order to access full marks. And what will determine whether those 9 or 15 pieces of information get full marks or not, is the clarity.

It's been explained to me that this is to be thought of as a task for the lower end of the grade range, similar to the photo task on the writing exam.

I can think of it this way. But only to avoid actual thinking. As in thinking, "The task was always accessible at a low level. But this is limiting it to a low level." Dumbing down. You may say that this sounds great. Let's not make everything too hard. But there are two serious downsides to this that I will demonstrate. Firstly that it turns into a task where a bad answer gets more marks than an attempt at a good one. And secondly, that this was a GCSE designed to make us teach better. But this task encourages us to teach worse.

My Year 10 class are currently preparing for a run through of the Speaking Exam where we allow them to prepare the tasks in advance. This is in order for them to have a successful run through of the exam, before their Mock hits them in Year 11.

Two pupils in my class had completely opposite responses to the card and my explanation of the markscheme.

One pupil quietly called me over and with a slightly disbelieving glint in his eye, showed me what he had written:

In the first photo, there are three people. There is a man. There is another man. There is a woman. In the second photo, there are four people. There are two women. There are two men. There is a man with a woman. There is another woman with a man.

Nine pieces of information, clearly expressed. Full marks. And which he could use, with slight variation, for any of the cards.

The other pupil took a completely different approach. Here's a snapshot:

He has tried to do what the task asks, and describe the photo. He's tried to show off his vocabulary, including some of the non topic words such as always or never. 

In the photo there is a street where there are always people. There are trees. There's never any free tables.

His sentences are based around there is, but he's tried to make it personal, detailed and meaningful. And there are mistakes. In particular, he's picked the wrong word for free. Which would affect... clarity. Resulting in a lower mark than the other pupil.

Thing is, I'm not necessarily saying in the exam that I think his answer should score full marks. It's not about the exam yet. It's about teaching. This is a pupil who wants to express himself. This is a pupil who is giving me something to work with. This is a pupil who will learn from this attempt. This is a pupil who could go on from this to something really nice.

But guess what. He won't be doing any of that. The most he will be doing is: There is a street. There are some people. There are some trees. There are some tables.

This exam is incentivising me NOT to teach this pupil how to write the things he wants. It is incentivising me to STOP him doing it. This exam is incentivising me to do bad things. We have been here before, and I don't like it.

Oracy across the curriculum

 

Here are some thoughts on Oracy. It's not about MFL. I may write something in the future on Oracy in MFL. But that would be something much bigger and more complex than whole school Oracy. It’s not a definitive, organised, thorough, well-structured formal piece of writing. It’s some first thoughts that may trigger more thoughts, including contrary arguments. That’s one of the things Oracy is about…

The Oracy Education Commission defined Oracy as, “Articulating ideas, developing understanding, and engaging with others through speaking, listening and communication.”

Oracy is closely related to Literacy. In fact they are probably twins, even if Literacy fancies itself as the older sibling. While there may be some sibling rivalry between Literacy and Oracy, there are strong bonds and shared energies. The current National Curriculum may have reinforced Literacy’s position, with a focus on narrowly traditional learning, “standard” English, SPAG, and the downgrading of the speaking and listening component of GCSE English. The Oracy push could be seen as being in order to balance this out. It will be important in all these potential clashes, not to sacrifice one element over another. A successful approach will recognise that all these aspects can fit into developing pupils’ language, ideas and communication.

On precisely this point, the strengths that a school has in Literacy are often rooted in Oracy. To give one example, our pupils’ love of reading is rooted in a love of story telling. And where pupils are not in love with the mechanics of reading, it is through story telling that we can engage them.

In the days of “Specialist Status”, where schools were designated as (for example) Science or Arts or Language Colleges, sometimes this could unfortunately privilege one subject over others. In our school, we had a unique specialist status. It was badged as “Humanities”, but it was essentially Art, Drama, Literacy. Which worked very successfully across all subjects. What subject doesn’t ask pupils to engage with expressing themselves through images, speech, writing? I would suggest that the very real strengths of this are very much still alive in our ethos today.

The Oracy Education Commission divide Oracy into three separate but overlapping areas:

Learning to Talk.

Learning through Talk.

Learning about Talk.

In the spirit of Oracy being about developing personal expression, rather than following formulaic strictures, I am going to start with the second: Learning through Talk.

Learning through Talk.

I am lucky that my school has always found a middle way, staying up to date but resisting fads. So we aren’t a school where teachers follow a script or where pupils are required to recall verbatim whole sentence answers in choral repetition or in response to questions. On the other hand, we have a maths department who are willing to experiment with chanting when it makes sense. And who focus explicitly on pupils being able to use the vocabulary and language of maths. This is the balance that an Oracy approach wants to develop.

From an Oracy perspective, rote responses and even the demand that pupils give whole sentence verbatim answers has a veneer of articulacy, but is actually the complete opposite. Oracy is about how pupils put thoughts and concepts into their own words. This is part of the process of them developing greater articulacy. But it’s also a vital glimpse into their emerging grasp and conceptualisation of ideas.

Questioning is a huge part of this. Partly the mechanics of how to engage with all pupils through the nature and pitching of questions and selecting who is called upon to answer. But the fundamental thing is that the teacher is interested in the pupils’ answers. And interested in pupils’ thinking. A wrong answer or a partial answer can reveal pupils’ thinking. And that is what we have to engage with.

Do our pupils see it this way? Or do they think that a teacher asks a question to see if the pupil knows the correct answer? In a French lesson, when one of my pupils volunteers, “I don’t know the answer but…” and tells me the things they think are going to be important, then I think we’re getting it right. They have the confidence to participate despite not being sure of the answer. And those things the pupil contributed will take us collectively towards the right answer and greater understanding.

In a science lesson, teachers know that telling the pupils “An object remains at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force” and getting them to memorise it, does not mean they have learned Newton’s First Law of Motion. They anticipate that actually, pupils may say that things move if you push them and if you stop pushing them, they stop moving. It’s the science teacher’s job to engage with that thinking and explore it further, to show pupils that there’s a better way of thinking about it. Oracy is engaging with ideas through listening and communication.

One of the controversial sides of Oracy is the question of register of language. Some of this falls into the topic of “Learning to Talk” and even “Learning about Talk”. But in subjects like History or Geography, it is deeply embedded in Learning through Talk. In a History lesson, the teacher often talks through events as if they were a story, making the pupils think about the motives and even feelings of historical or political figures and the situation they are in. There is a constant back and forth between the concision and precision of subject terminology, and using plain speaking for clarity and engagement. In geography, we see the same alternation between expressing ideas in familiar language such as “water the crops” and the technical vocabulary, “irrigation”. This is deliberately and carefully managed by the teacher. Oracy covers both of these aspects: expressing ideas in pupils’ own language, and extending their vocabulary into technical terms. And managing the transition so that what we are hearing is pupils’ developing expression of their conceptualisation, not rote learned barely understood answers.

In these examples we see the close links between Oracy and Literacy. Oracy is a powerful building block in approaching writing. Thrashing out ideas, rehearsing language, developing expression.

At my school, we have addressed aspects such as disciplinary literacy, metalanguage and metacognition through developments in Teaching and Learning, Literacy, and Laboratory Schools. They are all actually probably even more fundamental to Oracy. And I would add Pupil Voice to that list. When we survey or interview pupils, we are looking for their feedback, but we are also engaging them in a process of becoming more articulate in what they say and how they think about their learning. In French we can see a slow shift from thinking of language as a collection of things you can say, to focusing more on transferable concepts. So in Year 7, pupils will typically comment on topics such as “I can say what pets I have”, but by Year 9 they may have become more focused on knowledge they can apply, such as, “I can use my knowledge of phonics to pronounce unknown words.”

This development of pupils’ ability to express their ideas about their learning is also linked to citizenship. The subject Citizenship, of course, but also their active role as citizens. These issues belong in “Learning to Talk”, but it’s worth mentioning the importance of pupils being able to express themselves, explore ideas, listen to others, disagree agreeably. With particular concern for pupils who may have difficulties in this or be vulnerable because of their lack of confidence in rejecting ideas or asserting themselves. The Oracy Education Commission emphasise the importance of this in a world full of polarisiation, disinformation, manipulation and… AI.

There is also a hint of conflict between Oracy and Literacy. Do we give them equal respect? Do pupils consider speaking and listening to be “work” in the same way as reading and writing? Do we encourage pupils to copy a date and a title as soon as they start the lesson, as if a lesson is always going to be something that happens on paper?

What are the mechanics of speaking and listening that as a school we want to see in place? Teaching French, sometimes I wonder if pupils take a lesson seriously if we never put pen to paper. On the other hand, seeing pupils in a drama lesson, even when they have been moved last minute into a geography classroom, sitting in groups, taking charge of their interaction independently, restores my confidence! What are the ground rules, and what is pupils’ understanding of what a lesson is, what learning is, in different subjects?

 

Learning to Talk

 Learning to Talk, we have seen, involves two potentially conflicting approaches. Pupils learning to express themselves in their own voice. Pupils learning to express themselves “better”. We need to not worry about these being in conflict. They may be different. But they are different parts of the same thing: Oracy.

It is important for learning that we listen to pupils expressing ideas in their own language. Because this is the window we have onto their thinking. But it is also important for the sake of creativity, identity, confidence, plurality of cultures, and having a voice.

Learning to Talk includes dialogic teaching in the classroom. But it also can include debating, presenting, acting, performance, recitation, rhetoric, argument, persuasion, poetry, song, culture… In all of these, there will be interesting and complex interplay between pupils’ own voices, and hearing a variety of voices, including more formal modes of expression.

From Learning through Talk, I think we have seen that we should bear in mind that Oracy focuses us on the whole process leading up to a performance or presentation, not just the event itself. This is a learning process that in itself involves listening and communication, exploration and progress.

I can immediately think of strengths in Drama and Music, English, Citizenship and RE, the pastoral programme and other subjects, where we have huge strengths in Learning to Talk.

Learning about Talk

We have touched upon one of the major aspects the Oracy Education Commission are concerned about in Learning about Talk. That is, the idea that some talk is “better” than other talk. We all know powerful speakers who have their own voice and who don’t speak in “standard” English. And at the same time, we have all been told that it’s important for pupils to learn to speak “properly”. Learning about Talk equips pupils to understand these clashing social and political ideas. And maybe equips them to see language as a tool that they can learn to use in different ways. Learning about Talk also includes showing pupils examples of how language is used in the world outside school and reflecting on how what they learn in school will enable them to thrive as citizens.

That seems a good a place as any to stop.

 

Keeping Marking Simple in the Face of Complexity

 Year 7 have been writing about food they like and don't like. This is another classic example of where the teacher's focus and the pupils' focus are miles apart. Making marking the work almost impossible.

Remember when we were teaching pets and I told the class that we won't be doing chien, tortue, chat, oiseau for the next 5 years. But un / une and j'ai / je n'ai pas de are going to be important for ever? Well. Pupils still remember chien, tortue, chat and still mangle un, une, j'ai, je n'ai pas de. Is this bad? Should I cover their work in red ink, issue corrections, use codes in the margin to indicate spelling or gender infractions, and give a mark out of 10 for (in)accuracy?

No. I don't worry about this. It's interesting and important to notice. But clearly it is an absolutely natural feature in how language learning works. And I definitely do not want to end up with pupils who are not focused on meaning and on saying things they want to say.

This particular writing assessment at the end of the unit on Food and Drink, is haunted by this piece of work:

This is from three years ago (post on it here). You can see that the pupil has written almost nothing. And his comment underneath is that, "I was so worried about the / some, I didn't write a lot." And indeed almost every word for the (le, la, les) and some (du, de la, de l', des) is wrong. It's painful. But the real point is that it turned into an obstacle.

It made me think about exactly what are we testing in this assessment. I definitely want pupils to be using opinions: j'aime, je n'aime pas, j'adore... and some connectives: et, mais, parce que, par exemple... I want them to remember the words for foods. I think that's not problematic.

But the main things I want to see are not exactly language related. I want to see: 

• Pupils enjoying expressing themselves. 
• Pupils starting to link, contrast and develop ideas. 
• Pupils working increasingly independently, using resources only when needed.

So these are the features we mark for.

You can see the pupil's comment and the tick box at the bottom are focused on the level of support they needed. Or in this case, didn't need. And my comment is focused on how they are starting to link ideas.

You can also see that the le, la, les, du, de la, des is hit and miss. There are a couple of points here. Firstly, if I am saying to them that for the next five years, we are not going to be writing about food, just as we are not going to be writing about pets, then how much time do I want to be putting into demanding they know if beurre is masculine or feminine? Not much. So this piece of writing is interesting in that it shows whether or not the le / la is being picked up by ear as we see some of these words. Or are there patterns absorbed unconsciously so that, for example, it's rare for a pupil to say le pizza or la chocolat. Is that because they've heard it so many times? Or because there's a pattern?

You might say that there's a question of understanding being revealed. Yes. A pupil who puts le fraises or jai'me shows that they are not constructing their French from logical grammatical thought. But that understanding isn't going to be put right by some red ink. Suddenly and magically made a priority. In fact if we talked about le and les, then it may well turn out there is no misunderstanding. It is simply that they are not constructing the sentence from atomised grammatical elements. They are saying/writing chunks of French that come to them naturally to express something they want to say. If that's what's happening when learners use their language, then I would be a fool to pretend that their French is coming from a faulty grammatical assembly line that I need to fix, and to discard their writing as a flawed product that has to be recalled because some of the pieces aren't correctly assembled.

I can address le / les and j'aime, but this is going to be a long process, not a quick fix.

What if a pupil, like the example at the top of this post, was focused on the le, la, les to such an extent that they couldn't write. Well, first of all: well done that pupil for caring about the accuracy. If you really care that much, then you may well be the one who does learn it. In fact, here is what he wrote when I let him use his booklet to check the genders:

So that was my plan for this year. I would encourage all pupils to write as much as they could without using their booklets for support. And if any pupil asked about le / la, I would tell them I would let them check at the end before handing it in. To write without the booklet, putting what felt right, and then checking at the end.

How many pupils out of two classes asked me what they should do about getting gender right? One. One pupil in his first sentence said, "Sir, I don't know if it's le or la." None of the others were bothered.

Even more interestingly... As they finished, I said to them all, "Well done if you've done it without using your booklet. Now I do want you all to check one thing. Every time you have written le or la or les, I want you to use your booklet and check you put the right one."

What do you think happened?

You can see in their comments at the bottom, it clearly says, "I didn't use my booklet except when Sir told me to check le and la." Now look at le and la in their writing. Even when they check, it's not working. This isn't something we deal with by using red ink. It's a long and slow learning process of adjusting focus and attention, without making it an obstacle to self expression.

That would be a good place to stop. But I have one more to show you because it brings home the complexity of marking accuracy versus expression.

Here we have a pupil who wants to express himself, develop and link ideas and challenge himself to work independently. From an accuracy point of view, he has made some terrible mistakes. He has written je boisson eau minerale and je manger la pizza. Am I going to pull this apart for being terrible grammar and give him a low mark?

Of course not. Seen in the wider context of his language-learning trajectory, this is perfect. Firstly he is exploring the limitations of his language. Using the word for "a drink" to try to say "I drink". So this is someone engaged with expressing himself in the language. As exemplified by how his paragraphs are the most coherent and logical, with things like, "For breakfast I would like to eat a pain au chocolat but normally I eat omelets because I love eggs". And secondly, he is anticipating exactly the grammar we will be looking at next. How verbs end in er in the infinitive and how you change the ending when you conjugate the verb.

The comments on the work need to reflect an appreciation of his glorious effort and carefully manage his understanding that when you try a tricky skateboard move, you are more likely to fall off than if you keep it simple. 

So how do I mark the writing?

Firstly, clear criteria:

• Challenge yourself to use the booklet as little as possible.
• Express yourself and your opinions.
• Show off as much of the French you know as possible.
• Think about how ideas link.

Secondly, engage the pupils in commenting on these aspects. This is not for show or in a funny coloured ink. It's genuinely targeted reflection and part of a long term process of becoming aware of priorities. It's an opportunity to shape their thinking and encourage them to take control and be positive about their language-learning. And it is high quality information that allows me to understand how they wrote the piece and what their thoughts are.

Thirdly, my comments engage with theirs and engage with longer term learning, not just this piece. But my comments on the page (in my horrible handwriting) are not as important as what I say and do in the classroom as a result of reading their work. The main recipient of feedback from the pupils' assessed work is not the pupil. It's the teacher. You can see from this post how much it gives me to reflect on. Imagine if I wrote all this in red ink at the end of the pupils' work!

Fourthly. And definitely in last place. I have to record something in my markbook. It needs to be a shorthand for some of what has been discussed here. It needs to contain information on where the pupil is on their trajectory, allowing me to track individual progress in independence, coherent expression, and accuracy. But of course that doesn't work. Because the pupil who copies from the booklet will be more accurate than the pupil who takes risks and turns boisson into a verb.

What we do currently is record the level of independence. As you can see in the tick box at the end of the page, we are looking to record if pupils are:

• Writing by copying from eg a writing frame in the booklet.
• Writing their own sentences but reliant on finding things in the booklet.
• Writing independently but reliant on having prelearned, memorised material.
• Writing independently.

The idea is that all pupils produce writing of similar quality, reflected in our KPI exemplars. And we record whether they achieved this spontaneously, by memorisation or by using the booklet.

We do need to tweak this. Because pupils DO produce work of differing quality. Especially as almost all pupils challenge themselves to write spontaneously without using their booklet, or only checking at the end. We're going to be talking about this at the next department meeting. I am a fan of simplicity. So I don't think it's going to be useful to attempt to encode all the many possible variations of different combinations of expression, coherence, risk taking, accuracy and all the play-offs between them. I don't want to preempt what the department decide. But I am leaning towards keeping our current method of noting the level of independence, plus a simple + = - code to indicate how successful it was. Because this "marking" part of the whole writing and feedback and engaging with learning process really is the least important.

Really cool translation challenge.

 I've been working on a really cool translation challenge for the last 3 days. And I've nearly cracked the first 5 words. You'll love it. It's a linguist's dream. I could write a whole paper on just the first 5 words.

Here it is. Translate into Spanish, accurately and completely: "Boys will always be boys."

Of course, "Los niños siempre serán niños" won't do. It's an English idiomatic expression that doesn't translate into Spanish. Because it has to be specifically boys. Not all "children" of both genders.

I have been through all the words I know for child, to see if any of them specifically refer only to male children especially in the plural. Niños, chicos, muchachos, mozos, mocosos, nenes, chavales, escuincles...

And all my words for male to see if they could apply to children. Varón, macho, hombre, señor, caballero, güey, vato...

I have to admit I cheated. For this kind of untranslatable expression, I like to use linguee. It collects examples of where (hopefully) real people have attempted to translate things on the internet. Here's what it said for "Boys will be boys."

It showed straight away that I was right to be cautious. People generally avoid using "children will be children". And I absolutely love, "Los machitos serán machitos." For a day or so I thought that was perfect. And I liked the way that los machitos seems deliberately despectivo. But then I started to worry that although in the context of the text, the writer is being critical of machitos, the original sayer of the saying, is not.

I also don't like the "always". It's not part of the expression. It's been put in as an extra, and feels as if it has the value of "of course" or "as we know" or "as the saying goes." And it creates another problem alongside the future tense. "Children will always be children" sounds as if it's saying they won't grow up.

This is all delicious and thoughts about it kept coming to me. This morning I had a feeling that the English modal "will" isn't entirely functioning as the future. It's more in the true sense of "will" meaning "want" or "insist on". We see this in "Will you marry me?" which translates into Spanish as "Do you want..." And "I will" as "Sí quiero".

So my current favourite, while it doesn't solve all the problems, and means I have to let go of my old favourite machitos, is: Así se comportan los niños. With a siempre to fit in somewhere. And I am pretty sure I want it in present tense, not future tense.

Of course this isn't a fun intellectual challenge. This is the opening of the AQA A Level Spanish translation. And I have NO idea what they will have as an acceptable translation on the markscheme. Especially as, to give us an extra kick in the teeth, later in the translation they want you to render the word "children" to encompass both genders. I imagine the markscheme will accept, "Los niños serán niños" just to spite the candidates who recognised this doesn't work. 

I doubt, "Así siempre se comportan los niños" would get the marks. Unless they've read this post.

They will end up accepting a lot of literal translations that gloss over the difficulties or efforts to make a good job. And penalise you for putting in an extraneous los or missing out a de.

I have read the JCQ rules and there's nothing in there about not talking about the exam after it's been sat. Students are definitely talking about it on student forums. Teachers are cautious because the exam board like to keep it secure for next year's mock. But the thought of this being next year's mock makes me feel even more sick on top of the thought of it being this year's actual exam.

What are they trying to do with an exam like this? 

The way the markscheme works, with the text divided up into roughly 4 word chunks worth a mark each, means that if you have something wrong somewhere in that chunk, you get no marks. I can easily see valiant attempts at wrangling with this translation coming out with 0 marks overall. Easily.

This 5 word opening puzzle wasn't even necessarily the worst part of the translation. At least the problems were blatantly obvious, even if the solutions have given me something to think about for a couple of days.

I don't think there's any harm in discussing the first 5 words, as it's already known on social media and student forums as the "boys will be boys" translation. And I've also see "Big boys don't cry" discussed by native speakers saying that the Spanish expression doesn't have the word "big".

Too many of the things in this translation depend on feel for the language rather than testing any knowledge or rule appropriate for this level. Avoiding too many details, I think there are real difficulties in picking the right word for things like, heard, anything, language, was part of, environment. And decisions as to whether to include an article which again, depend on "feel" for the language rather than testing knowledge of a rule.

There's a vicious negative antecedent which isn't a use of the subjunctive usually required at this level. And a nasty imperative with indirect object pronoun. But while unnecessarily hard, these aren't pushing into native speaker territory in the same way as handling nuances of idiomatic connotation and collocation. I personally can enjoy this translation as a challenge to my "feeling" for Spanish, having read vast amounts of literature and having lived in a Spanish-speaking country for four years. That's not what we should be testing at A Level.

I know the point of being "the nice man who teaches languages" is to be honest and fair and not angrily hurt people's feelings. And to remember that in the precarious situation of languages, we are all in the same boat together. But I really don't know what possessed the exam board to think this translation was in any way suitable for English pupils who have studied Spanish in school. A hugely damaging and irresponsible mistake.

Generally I always think the exam boards do a good job and have huge expertise in making the specifications imposed on us work. Or work as best they can given the hand they are dealt. As I spell out in a recent post, the current A Level is awful, but not because of the exam boards.

But this translation was a mistake. All around the country, students who did well in Spanish at GCSE, eagerly picked A Level, stuck with it despite the ridiculous expectations, only to be faced with this at the end of all their hard work. And we wonder why only 2 students per high school pick A Level Spanish. Or actually, thank goodness it's only 2. Who would wish this on anybody?

For me, this translation is a huge kick in the teeth. For the students, they may not even have realised how impossible it was and the kick in the teeth won't come until August. On one level I am intellectually in awe of how such an incredible translation was put together. But that of course is utterly insignificant faced with how sick I feel that this was done to our students.

There will come a point where in all honesty, we won't be able to justify letting pupils take this. Already I would never actively encourage anyone. And I know cases of languages teachers and college heads making sure their own children don't. I don't know how long I can carry on pretending to the pupils that it's a viable option. It's heartbreaking.