How important do you think having a MFL at GCSE is?

[AbbyGal]

DS is revising hard for his GCSEs and all the moaning is about his French. He got a 6 in the mock so he's doing ok but he insists it's REALLY hard and 'none of his mates are doing a language'

We did persuade him to continue with French as it was always seen as really positive back in our day but I'm wondering if that is still the case today?

Thank you for all the replies, very interesting.

He is in Yr 11 and actually had his speaking exam yesterday (which apparently was 'ok' whatever that means!) which is what prompted my question.

Thank you for the offers of help, he doesn't seem to be struggling as such, it's just the only subject he doesn't actually enjoy and I was feeling a bit guilty that we did push him to take it based on what seems to be out of date thinking.

That said, I do believe having, even a basic knowledge of a second language can never be a bad thing - I took my O'level nearly 40 years ago and I've been amazed whilst helping him revise at how much is buried in the depths of my brain.

I don’t believe it’s important at all - it’s a school performance measure to have a certain number of pupils doing the English baccalaureate. So of course schools will over state its value. Ds (year 10) is happy doing a language at GCSE , if he hadn’t wanted to I’d have advocated for him to do another subject instead.

Nope. They offered French but didn’t have enough takers so cancelled the course. He’s y11 now and I believe Spanish is running for the year below but not for the upcoming y9’s.

It wasn’t a problem for ds as he didn’t want to take it anyway and tbh was fairly hopeless at French. For me at his age it would have been a real problem. And I do think it limits their options.

I agree with that about the need for the extra layer of human check in many circumstances, but what I was meaning is that there will be fewer jobs at the very basic end of translation (without the complexities that you mention). This is because the AI is getting more trustworthy and needs less checking. I've observed this first hand from my own work where I was doing the checking - I'm picking up hardly any issues now compared to 5 years ago.

I have a first class languages degree. I don’t use it for my career at all. I did it because I loved studying languages and the culture of the main language I studied. The degree also allowed me to live abroad for a year. Now, it’s useful for travel or reading articles/news in that language.

I would encourage my children to take a language as I do think it broadens horizons but I know it’s not for everyone and if there are other subjects they might excel in more then I wouldn’t push it.

The reason I think a lot of kids struggle is that as a country we don’t teach English grammar particularly well, so when they start learning French/German/Spanish the kids don’t have a great frame of reference. That was true even of some of the students on my course at Uni!

It's a nice to have IF the child likes languages and is likely to do reasonably well in it, but universities won't care. Schools that want high Ebacc numbers will be keen to encourage their students to take one.

I did two MFL and Latin for GCSE. I then did a third MFL as part of my degree, and then spent 10 years living in a country that required yet another new MFL. So, I am very in favour of learning languages.

DD has severe dyslexia and struggles massively to spell anything in English. The languages department at DD's school waved goodbye very cheerfully at the end of Y8 when she was allowed to drop them completely.

They're not for everyone, and quite honestly GCSE level is useless for anything much more than a day trip. If you want to really learn a language, and use it, there are plenty of ways to do that outside formal schooling.

Language learning opens people's horizons, boosts literacy skills in the native tongue, teaches people to look at the world from a different perspective and allows them to understand the target language culture better.

I am not sure it would boost uni acceptances but is that really the whole point of education for you? I speak three different languages and I am able to access literature and write in those three languages.

I can travel confidently across the countries where I can communicate in the native tongue and people react differently when they realise I make an effort to speak in their tongue. If I was a recruiter, I would certainly consider proficiency in a second language a deal breaker between two candidates with similar levels of competency in other skills.

My kids' school requires everyone to do a GCSE in MFL unless the child is struggling overall/achievement is very low across the board. I don't know how unis view it. If you are applying for maths, I doubt they care about a french GCSE.

Why does everyone fixate on whether MFL are 'useful' when they don't with any other subject? If you're going to study MFL at uni and become a translator, then how 'useful' is GCSE Physics? Not very. But nobody questions whether they should do it (or combined science or whatever) - they accept that science is a whole area of study that teaches a particular set of skills, which is valuable even if you're never going to study science again. But for some reason people have stopped thinking that about languages, and just talk about whether you're going to go on holiday in France or whether you need a particular subject to get a uni offer, which is rather depressing as an educational philosophy.

I agree @loobert