NRCSE response to Ofqual re. summer 2020 exams and bilingual/heritage language learners

Thank you to all those who got in touch with NRCSE regarding their GCSE and A level students. We have collated all your details and worked with Baroness Coussins, Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Modern Languages to prepare a response to parliament on behalf of the supplementary education sector. You can download the NRCSE responses to the questions that are most relevant here.

Note that the responses we have made are on the basis that most community-led supplementary schools are NOT registered examination centres. Most students taking GCSEs, ‘A’ levels are doing so in mainstream schools and colleages.

We have, however, spoken in depth with three community-led registered examination centres: Rustam School, Znaniye Russian School and BAPS Swaminarayan who have all submitted their own responses to the consultation and are working very hard to ensure all candidates registered with them are treated fairly and inline with candidates at mainstream school examination centres. We have also been in discussion with the Turkish Language, Culture and Education Consortium, the Polish Education Society and the Cyprus Educational Mission all of which provide support to community-led examination centres and to students entering their language examinations as external and/or independent candidates.

If you wish to submit your own response as a supplementary setting that teaches a language but whose pupils enter the exams in mainstream school or college settings then you should do so online www.gov.uk/government/consultations/exceptional-arrangements-for-exam-grading-and-assessment-in-2020 You are welcome to use any/all of what we have written in the NRCSE submission. The consultation will close on Wednesday 29th April.

The APPG has prepared a response and recommendations regarding bilingual/heritage language learners.

Please keep on sending us your experiences and questions.

Kind regards,

Pascale Vassie OBE, Executive Director NRCSE

Image is from ADB, available under Creative Commons, of young people at the Tupou High School in Nuku’alofa. Nuku’alofa is the capital of Tonga.