The English language is not an easy language to learn - fact! We have fronted adverbials and past perfect and present perfect, but then we throw in idioms and homophones; it is no wonder that our poor students’ heads are spinning. We, as teachers, have an awful lot to cram into a few short months of teaching. We take students who do not know how to use a dictionary, and we do everything within our power to get them to the finish line. Our job is never an easy one. Nevertheless, no time of year is more dreaded, more feared, more stressful than the few weeks set aside for the speaking and listening exams.

For those who do not know, the speaking and listening exam is one of the three core elements of the functional skills qualification. It consists of two tasks; firstly, an individual presentation followed by questions and answers; secondly, a formal group discussion about an important social issue, like animal rights or healthy living. The exam itself is important as it focuses on developing communication skills and is directly relatable to further education and the world of work. It is also an excellent opportunity to get to know your students a little better, hear about their hobbies, thoughts and opinions, and get your students working together with their peers. After all, like my PGCE lecturer used to say, “There is nothing like a little bit of collaboration to get the student truly engaging.”

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Yet, throughout my time as a functional skills English lecturer, I have developed my own little sayings, one of which has proven to be accurate time and time again: “Everyone cries when speaking and listening exam time comes around.”

Functional skills: Problems with the speaking and listening exam

The students cry, the teachers cry, the attendance monitors cry, the quality assurance manager cries, and the exam officers cry. It is safe to say that at one point or another, we have all found ourselves just staring at the computer screen, wondering if it is all even worth it.

For too many of our students, the speaking and listening exams are a stressful and often overwhelming experience that forces those who would prefer to remain at the back of the class into the spotlight.

Now, I agree that it is good to get students out of their comfort zone and, let’s face it, we all have our “smart targets” to stretch and challenge the students, building confidence through mastery of content and techniques. However, forcing students into unnecessary and uncomfortable situations is not always the way to achieve this. Particularly in the year of a pandemic when mental health issues are soaring. Every year, without fail, attendance drops as student anxiety and anticipation grows. Even those who do attend begin an exhausting process of bartering to regain some feeling of control.

Now, to meet the students’ often diverse needs over multiple levels, you almost begin an elaborate gymnastics routine, jumping, flipping and bending into any shape needed, just to get the job done. By the time you are done arranging all the minor concessions and alterations for each student and the last presentation has been delivered, then, well… then the real work begins.

Whether you type up the assessments as you go along, handwrite or record every exam, the painstaking task of transcribing how each student has met the exam criteria on to the assessment records is soul-destroying. The unnecessary stress and workload this places on teachers is indescribable, unacceptable and unnecessary. I know this because it is not a compulsory part of the GCSE qualification; in fact, it is an optional extra.

Although I understand that functional skills are related to functional literacy in the real world, and communication is a big part of that, we are still an equal qualification to that of GCSE since the 2019 reforms and should be treated as such. Yet, despite this, the goalposts are being moved further away for functional skills English students, which does nothing but disproportionately affect second-language students and those with mental, emotional, physical and learning difficulties. Not to mention that teachers are being buried under sheer weight of numbers, both in students and paperwork.

Make speaking and listening assessments an optional extra

If functional skills are genuinely going to be an alternative but equal qualification to that of GCSE, we need to offer an alternative but equal assessment criteria. This means, among other things, making speaking and listening assessments an optional component. In turn, this would free up much-needed time in the scheme of work to focus on other aspects of English.

It would eliminate the many hoops that we, as teachers, must jump through to get medical evidence for exam exemption for autistic students, students who may be mute or have other difficulties, such as cerebral palsy, that make speaking difficult. Not to mention that it would reduce the workload of teachers, who, instead of writing up hundreds of assessment transcripts, could, like with GCSE, complete a simple assessment checklist for only those students that choose to do the assessment, and get back to what they should be doing - teaching.

Jennifer Wilkinson is a functional skills English lecturer at a college in England