My response to the 2026 MFL GCSE results

NB This is all my own understanding, interpretation and opinion - please do correct any inaccuracies if you spot them!

Hi, if we haven’t met, I’m Kate Clifton, aka Kate Languages. I used to be a French, German and Spanish teacher, and I’ve spent the past 9 years as a self-employed independent teaching resources creator.

Most of my resources focus on the MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) GCSEs, and I have also delivered a number of training sessions for the new spec GCSEs. 

I also run a Facebook group called MFL GCSE (2026), which solely focuses on this new specification. 

I don’t work for either AQA or Edexcel and I haven’t marked any papers for this new specification. 

(Just to put into context who I am and why I’m responding publicly to today’s results!)

For those who don’t know about the recent history of French, German and Spanish GCSEs in England, I’ll just give a quick overview, as far as I understand it. 

In 2018, we had the first exams for a new GCSE specification, along with most other subjects. This was to align the GCSE with the new 9-1 grades (moving from the old A*-G system) and to remove controlled assessments. 

The 2018 spec wasn’t without its issues, namely the speaking and writing exam instructions being in the target language (eg French) rather than English, which caused confusion among many students and made these papers inaccessible for some, particularly those taking the foundation paper.

Then, in 2022, we were told that there would be another new specification, with the first exams being in 2026. Pearson Edexcel and AQA exams boards started to get accreditation in the spring of 2023.

The rationale behind it was (among other things) to make the GCSE more accessible, particularly for foundation students, to include elements that tested “sound symbol correspondences” (phonics) and it was hoped by many that it would improve uptake for French, German and Spanish GCSEs.

A number of changes were introduced, including: a prescribed vocabulary list of 1200 words for foundation and 1700 for higher; a new “reading aloud” element in the speaking exam; a new dictations task in the listening exam; all instructions and questions in English in all papers.

MFL teachers across the country set to work getting to grips with the changes, understanding how these exams would be assessed, adapting their programmes of study, and so on.

I ran a series of online workshops starting in 2023 to help teachers understand the basics, and I have continued to deliver workshops, create new resources and use my voice on social media to give teachers as much help and information as possible.

By the time the first cohort of students sat these in exams in spring and early summer of 2026, it felt like most teachers were fully prepared, their students knew what to do, and they were feeling confident that the exams were fair, more accessible, and there was a glimmer of hope that after many years of harsh grading in MFL, things were about to change.

No such luck.

Initial analysis of results (from what I have seen in Facebook groups including my own), is that the grade boundaries have increased from 2025 to 2026 by as much as 15% for some grades, and that there are more grade 3s (aka a “fail”) than ever before. 

Looking at the numbers of students who achieved certain grades across all 3 languages, there are tiny increases for most (e.g. 72.9% got a grade 4+ in French in 2025, and 73.6% got a grade 4+ in 2026), but if the 2026 grade boundaries had been kept closer to last year’s, there would have been a much bigger increase in the numbers of students getting higher grades. 

This would finally mean that students get the same grades for MFL as for other subjects.

But once again, this hasn’t happened.  

When 76% gets you a grade 9 in the English Language AQA paper (which doesn’t even have tiers, by the way, but that’s a post for another day!), or you need 78.5% in physics (widely regarded as one of the hardest subjects out there) for a grade 9, but the grade boundary for French AQA GCSE is more than 10 percentage points higher at 89.5%, and it’s 88% for German and 87.5% for Spanish, where is the incentive for the highest ability students to choose a language for GCSE? 

Source: https://www.aqa.org.uk/files/QHo9jKqPL0pZ5xdB09S2Ww/a8c1634eeced8e0ef79b2d179398dfd2414ee291.pdf

And these other subjects don’t even have to think about the skewing of results due to ‘native’ speakers, either!

And the numbers aren’t much different for other grades, either… to pass your English Language AQA GCSE with a grade 4, you needed 47%, and on the physics higher paper, just 33.5% (or 63% if you took the foundation paper). 

Compare this to French at 54% if you took the higher papers or 67% if you did foundation. German was similar - 68% for foundation or 49% for higher to get a grade 4 - and Spanish wasn’t much lower at 65% for foundation and 45% for higher.

Tell me how any of this is fair on the thousands of students and teachers who have worked just as hard in MFL as they have in other subjects, got really high marks in their exams, and still ended up with lower grades?

And yes, I know that grade boundaries change every year, and it all depends on the difficulty of the exams and the cohort, etc, etc… but we have seen for many years that students do tend to get lower grades in MFL than in other subjects. 

This new specification could have been the ideal chance to change this, and once again MFL students and teachers have been thoroughly let down.

Which all begs the question… what on earth was the point of changing the specifications in the first place?