Asking my Sons school to host a GCSE exam in a subject they dont teach (sons native language)

[Towcester]

My son has grown up bi-lingual. The language is not taught at his school. he is Year 9.

I am trying to formulate a letter that will ask if the school would host a GCSE exam so that he will have an extra GCSE which will help him at some stage.

What do you think is the best way to persuade the school to agree to this? I could do some of the groundwork potentially to find an examiner for the speaking exam for example. I am trying to be a bit more persuasive though because I suspect they will go with the easy anser of 'no'. We can pay the costs too.

Any ideas? or anyone been through this?

The first issue is if any staff at the school
speak the language as language qualifications have an oral test. I’m not sure about a school accepting an outside person conducting this section due to possible misconduct.

Is there another school or examination centre he can do it instead?

Schools love to help with this as it's an extra GCSE for them which they get credited for.

Just ring the school & ask to speak with the exams officer.

If it's an unusual language they may need assistance with finding someone for the speaking part but unless you want him to take it early they probably won't need to start organising anything until Christmas of Y11.

But do speak with the exams officer and I'm sure they will be helpful and reassuring. We do it all the time in our school, have had Italian, Arabic, Polish, all sorts of languages.

Does he want to do it?

A back-up plan would be to check and see if the language is offered as an evening class anywhere - they might offer the GCSE?

i work in exams and we do this all the time too, like pp said, the school get all the credit so it works in their favour.

Definitely worth a conversation with the school as PP say. My son is sitting exams for a language they didn't offer in his year but do offer now, so that makes it a bit simpler than your scenario. I'm pretty sure the school do also offer exams in languages they don't teach at all, like Polish and Arabic.

The school I used to work for did this regularly for our students who spoke an additional language at home. I'd ping off an email to the head of MFL and the exams officer but I don't think it is as unusual as you first thought.

School should help with this- phone the exams officer. If the school have EAL support, they may be able to help too

Plenty of schools offer this. DD's school put out an appeal for parents who might be able to help mark mock GCSEs in a whole list of languages - they would be provided with a markscheme and support from a languages teacher. I don't know how they manage the speaking part - but they've probably built up contacts over the years.

Yes, it would be a language which they may struggle to locate an examiner for the spoken part but we may be able to find one ourself.

I used to invigilate and there was ALWAYS an outside examiner brought in to do oral exams so this shouldn't be an issue. Teachers aren't allowed in the exam room and invigilators weren't required to speak the language. This won't be a problem although there might be other reasons why not.

Thanks, all, email sent.

I think you’ve misunderstood. Language exams have a recorded oral exam - this is usually done by the teacher. Invigilators don’t have anything to do with that section of the exam. Teachers are not allowed into the written exams.

No harm in asking

but also look at the option doing it later when he leave at college or remote learning

I have invigilated Oral A level Spanish exams with an outside examiner so I know it happens (I had to correct him when he got the Centre Number wrong so its a good job I was there). I didn't supervise any GCSE orals so I won't argue with you there.

Our school said no to acting as exam centre. Hope you have more luck. Another local school agreed though.

In my day (a while ago now!) GCSE orals were done with a teacher from the school and A level orals were done with an outside examiner who came to the school.

Former exams officer here. My old school happily did this every year. Usually 1 or 2 polish speakers for us but other random languages popped up too each year. Head of languages organised it all and simply booked an external assessors to come in for the spoken part. Then exam papers all simply sat as normal (in a small room if only one or two pupils).

there's a big gap between speaking a language as a bilingual child and being able to get a top grade in the gcse subject. gcse languages have a rigid mark scheme and it's possible to answer the questions accurately and without any actual mistakes but still not get a good mark because e.g. you didn't demonstrate a particular kind of subject-object-adjective agreement or use a kind of phrasing that they are looking out for. schools that say no to this have probably been burned in the past by speakers of other languages signing up to do a gcse, doing badly due to not having done any formal study, and dragging the school's performance averages down.

I did GCSE and A level in my mother tongue and tbh it didn’t really add anything to my opportunities or qualifications. People generally believe you if you say you are fluent or bilingual in a language -
and can easily see if it’s true if it’s relevant for the job. Otherwise they look for a certain number of GCSEs or Alevels. The extra one I guess may help if your DC will struggle to get good grades in the other subjects.

Go straight to the Head of the languages dept. He/she will make it happen as they recognise the importance of having a qualification. My former languages teacher did this for several pupils - Italian, mandarin and Serbian.

If the oral assessor is NOT a teacher at the school then there must be an invigilator there to act as a chaperone - for safeguarding purposes.

Not if they are DBS checked. Ours were permitted to be alone with the oral assessor.

I've worked in schools who have arranged for GCSE exams in children's first languages. Usually it's the head of MFL who can arrange as long as senior leadership are on board. Parental support was beneficial for some languages though in terms of finding assessors who speaks the language.