Spanish or Russian GCSE?

[ispecialiseinthis]

My DC GCSE options deadline is coming up and, as with most 14yo, they don’t currently have a career in mind.
The school will let them do a maximum of 10 GCSEs - 6 core subjects (triple science, English language and literature, maths). Doing both languages is not really an option, as it will mean dropping another option.

Any advice how to choose between the two languages? TIA

Very few Universities care what you get at GCSE btw. They're interested in a levels and additional post 16 work.

Not sure when 12% became a majority btw.

@JusteanBiscuits if you apply for something competitive like medicine then medical schools will often give you points for your top 8 gcses with a 9 or sometimes an 8/9 attracting the most points. It's hard to get interviews so helping yourself by taking gcses you can realistically get high grades in would be a sensible move.

That data was from 2007. I think having looked up the latest numbers of 9s on the Pearson website it is probably currently about 70% native speakers in Russian.

@JusteanBiscuits In case you are interested. No idea how the exam boards are working this out but on the surface it looks as though it is dramatically easier to get a language gcse at a high grade in Russian or Chinese than French or German or Spanish but this has to be down to an attempt to compensate for native speakers. Meanwhile 9s in English and Maths are very hard to come by.

https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/support/support-topics/results-certification/grade-statistics.html?Qualification-Family=GCSE

No, even medicine isn't really interested in your GCSE's outside of maths and English, as that is a strict requirement to work in the NHS. A friend's daughter has gone to study Dentistry, and they were much more interested in her knitting skills than GCSE results. Extended study in 6th form is the way to stand out.

Also I think schools have been encouraged to enter native speakers for gcses in languages they don't actually teach to improve their results. So maybe that accounts for increased numbers.

As one example (you can google if interested in others) Newcastle invites for medical school interview based 50% on GCSE scores and 50% based on your score in an admissions test called the UCAT. A Levels count instead of GCSEs only if you apply after taking them.

Maths and English have a lower rate of high grades because every Tom, Dick and Harriet takes them. Not so MFLs and other non compulsory subjects. At A level maths gets the most top grades.

@LaMiaAmicaGeniale

German & French are most harshly graded of the GCSE & Spanish isn't far behind. You managed to find data on Russian & so perhaps Russian might end up in a higher grade?

ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2023/06/revisiting-subject-difficulty-at-key-stage-4/

ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2024/04/languages-are-still-harshly-graded-at-gcse/

AI provides you quoted to specific websites they use as a source. AI used websites and provides links. I am surprised you don't know that.

I can only stand by what I copy pasted - and I already did. The specific details as psychometric profiles: bilingual, second generation are collected by exam boards e.g. EdExcel AQA and so on.

I would be very interested if there was a Polish GCSE taker who had zero Polish heritage and took Polish at the exam given that apart from Polish Saturday Schools there are hardly any courses anywhere

If you look at 8 and 9 grades combined for some of the languages for Pearson you have

French 16.2
Spanish 17.4
German 19.7
Urdu 32.9
Italian 66.9
Persian 63.2
Turkish 66.4
Russian 87.3

I feel like a lot of this must be down to increasing numbers of native speakers in the languages. The exception seems to be Urdu (thought the 8/9 rate is still double that of French). I wonder if many native speakers are fluent when speaking or listening but find the written language hard.

In a way it is encouraging for non native speakers who want to take the gcse as it suggests they are trying to set a standard and are prepared to award more 8/9 grades if more native speakers take it. No idea how they manage to maintain a standard across such different languages however. Perhaps it is based on an expected level of communication. Though I imagine for a native English speaker that level would be easier to achieve in French than Chinese.

my sons school where the majority of Russian speaking (Polish, Ukrainian etc) children have taken German.

Which is purely anecdotal as you base your knowledge one one school...😆. purely anegdotal 7k pupils were taking Polish at the exam in 2023. And there are no Mon- Fri schools in UK that would provide Polish as a language of choice between y7- y10.
And purely anecdotal is 18k Polish kids attending Saturday Polish Schools that prepare kids to GCSE (160 schools UK wide)

Maybe your friends who don't bother even to send kids to Polish school will be more credible and knowledgable source of information about Polish schools as their kids never attended 😅 it.

Also Russian is pretty niche so even among non native speakers it may attract more entries from talented linguists.

https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/language_trends_england_2023.pdf

The British Council's Language Trends reports provide annual insights into language education in England. The 2023 report notes that certain languages, such as Polish, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Italian, have students achieving GCSE language scores substantially higher than English speakers or other language groups. This suggests that students with a heritage background in these languages may be leveraging their native proficiency to achieve higher scores.

I mean back to the original OP you would be able to tell from the school. If the results for Spanish and Russian were similar and you knew that there weren't huge numbers of native speakers being entered (which there probably aren't as they are actually teaching the language to everyone who wants to learn it rather than just entering native speakers to make themselves look good) then you would know it didn't make much difference.

I think that MFL exams should only count for progress and attainment 8 if the language is actually taught at the school and available as an option to everyone.

My money is on Highgate!

No need to be quite so rude. I had said, in a previous post that it was purely anecdotal. How clever of you to point out something I'd already said.

No, not Highgate. Or even near.

It's just a very normal high school. Respected but not a massively high performing school. Popular locally, but not one people would move across London for.

Not that you care by now OP, but I did Russian at university. I would go for Spanish. If he is interested in languages he can then pick up Russian ab initio at most universities that offer that course. I did French GCSE and A-level, and then did Russian ab initio.

@LaMiaAmicaGeniale

That's interesting. I am surprised by the high number of 8/9 for Russian. It seems for French Spanish & German they still need to allocate a fair spread of grades with some getting 1-3 (so not technically passing) but Russian can have a lot of high grades. It seems a bit unfair!

I didn’t anticipate this thread to go for 8 pages!
I am not sure whether this is wise(!) but thought I would update to say that DC has chosen Russian, although it hasn’t been locked it in yet. They were on the fence/leaning towards Spanish but decided that they liked that Russian was relatively obscure and Spanish was something they could continue under their own steam.

(P.s not Highgate)

Great news, OP! I also did Russian GCSE (many years ago, as an extra class alongside my French and German A Levels on a lunchtime 🤓) Loved it so much that I went on to study it at uni, lived in Moscow for a bit after uni and then for a short time had a job where I also got to travel back to Russia. I haven't used it for several years now but i hope its still there lurking inside my brain somewhere! It's sad that DC today won't have the same opportunities for year abroads etc, but we can always hope for change.

Incidentally, my school was a state school and offered it because the German teacher had also studied Russian at uni. At the time, no Ukrainians, Russians or other Eastern European nationalities in our school (this was pre the 2004 expansion of the EU). That teacher has since left so it's no longer offered, but it really shows how much effect teachers can have on your future!

That is lovely to read!
Who knows where this may take them - maybe somewhere, maybe nowhere? But learning Russians is an opportunity they are less likely to have outside the school setting.