School not offering Spanish GCSE because it's too hard

[ModForLangQ]

DS has really enjoyed French in Yr 7 and was looking forward to doing Spanish in Yr 9. However, the school have announced they won't be offering it as the new GCSE exam is too difficult and they wouldn't be able to get the children to the required standard in two years.

Anyone else's school doing this?
Are the school being reasonable or is it a cop out?

Don't think that's fair most GCSEs could be consider difficult

Ultimately it doesn't matter what subjects you do just the grades you could always move schools if you're unhappy.

Learning any foreign language is a good skill to have. It excites the brain.

You really don't need to be 'natively' bilingual to be a decent MFL teacher though. I've worked with fantastic non-native speaker MFL teachers and also quite a few native speakers. Many non UK nationals might well have little tolerance for the way schools are run in the UK compared with in their native country. And yes, there are probably much better, well-paid jobs they good get.

It's hard enough to find non-native speaker MFL teachers atm. Jobs have come up locally, but I'm not applying. Much prefer being a cover supervisor these days - no planning, no marking, no mountains of paperwork, no pressure.

Of course you don't need to be bilingual, but someone upthread wondered what all the Spanish people who lived in this country were doing - perhaps they could be MFL teachers. And I've read enough threads on MN to see the frequent demand that a teacher should be absolutely fluent, even at primary level. Hollow laugh. Some primary teachers have had several attempts to get GCSE Maths and English. They are highly unlikely to have a clutch of language qualifications. (Although dd's Yr 6 teacher had a French degree from Bristol!)

It's entirely possible (not for everyone, I realise that, but for a lot of the families on MN) to pursue language proficiency outside of school. Even without a formal qualification, "I've been studying Spanish in my spare time by doing XYZ" is going to be good on a university application.