{"id":18233,"date":"2019-07-05T23:23:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T23:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/?p=18233"},"modified":"2019-07-05T23:23:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T23:23:46","slug":"hmc-director-modern-language-gcses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/hmc-director-modern-language-gcses\/","title":{"rendered":"HMC director claims modern languages GCSE\u2019s should be easier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to Mike Buchanan, the Executive Director of the Headmasters\u2019 and Headmistresses\u2019 Conference (HMC), GCSE <strong>exams on modern languages should be more accessible, in order to preserve students\u2019 interest in these subjects.<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mr. Buchanan, a representative of the best-performing state schools in the United Kingdom, has claimed that <strong>students about to take their GCSE\u2019s are choosing their subjects based on the knowledge they already have.<\/strong> This tendency is worrying as most students about to graduate should be trying to build up their skills and expertise, rather than choosing comfortable topics.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Security over modern languages<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ambitious high-school graduates are often looking for the best way to rank higher among their school mates, and choosing their strong subjects over modern language exams is a logical decision. However, this is a worrying statistic, which is taking over education in the United Kingdom. According to recent reports, <strong>interest in foreign languages is gradually dropping around the country, and the main <\/strong><\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/brexit-has-a-negative-effect-on-language-learning-across-the-uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reason<\/a> for this is Brexit.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr. Buchanan said that:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Students are weighing up their options and if they are ambitious and want to go to a highly ranked university, they are sometimes choosing subjects on that basis.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to the 2017 and 2018 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/guide-to-gcse-results-for-england-2018\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">analysis<\/a> of GCSE test takers, <strong>the number of students who decided to take the French language exam has significantly dropped over the course of one year.<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mr. Buchanan also stated that the current trend of students choosing to take the most accessible subjects for the GCSE\u2019s exams should be changed, as this is not the way to build prosperity and development throughout Britain\u2019s educational system.\u00a0<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To boost interest in foreign language GCSE exams, Mr. Buchanan has suggested that the\u00a0<\/span><strong>exam questions should be simplified, so that more students would be compelled to take a test in a modern language discipline.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Mike Buchanan, the Executive Director of the Headmasters\u2019 and Headmistresses\u2019 Conference (HMC), GCSE exams on modern languages should be more accessible, in order to preserve students\u2019 interest in these subjects. Mr. Buchanan, a representative of the best-performing state schools in the United Kingdom, has claimed that students about to take their GCSE\u2019s are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,16],"tags":[570,605,697,1313],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}