a G.C.S.E. in Franglais?

We were misinformed yesterday, - the Government is not seeking to abolish the oral test as part of language exams on the grounds that it imposes stress on students.

But we were almost right. To alleviate stress, (the poor darlings!), there will be instead a series of much shorter oral tests. The difference is that while the final oral test originally conducted by visiting examiners, more recently conducted by the class teacher and recorded on tape for quality purposes, will be replaced by a series of tests, with grades/marks set by the school itself and no moderation except possibly occasional quality control.

Given that schools and teachers will have every incentive to be generous in marking the tests, the cynic could be forgiven for thinking that this could be another aspect of dumbing down. If you were the teacher and in line for a promotion soon, would you give poor marks to many students? If you were head of department, or head teacher, would you want to have language recruitment problems when students discover that the language is too hard?

This is another element of continuous assessment, and the dropping of another element of relatively objective testing. While admitting that "final"tests do impose stress, (although is this a bad thing?), what is proposed runs severe risks and offers little in objectivity.

Is it any real surprise that countries like Germany, starting English when children are 8 and continuing until 18, make a better fist of foreign languages than we do, who start languages at 11 or 12 and then water down any objective testing of spoken ability?