8/12/25
Promoting ALL!
- If you are not yet a member of ALL and you are benefiting from what we offer here, we hope that you will feel that it is ‘the right thing to do’ to support our national volunteer subject association which works on your behalf. You can find out more – and join us – here.
- Your school can join for just £135 a year (a fraction of the cost of a day’s INSET per person – less than a cup of coffee a week!) and other membership rates are available. We look forward to welcoming you!
- Join us at The ALL London January Event Saturday 17th January 2026 for more exam-focused sessions: (just £10 for ALL members)
- AQA and Edexcel are kindly offering parallel sessions as par to our programme.
- Jennifer Wozniak will share ideas for preparing GCSE
- Steve Smith will share A level teaching techniques ..
- and much more!
- Register for ALL’s flagship Language Conference – Fri 13 – Sat 14th March 26 – to hear loads of speakers and meet and make friends with other keen professionals.
- Join us at future ALL Subject Leader get-togethers.
Session information
- Catherine Ames, ALL Council Member, Convener of the ALL Subject Leader Group and ALL London Committee member introduces and moderates the session.
- David Blow, ALL Fellow and Executive Headteacher of SESSET offers practical advice and some worked examples on estimating grades for the first examination series for the GCSE French German and Spanish, and place this in the context of the Ofqual statements.
- Helen Myers, Chair of ALL London Branch gives responses from exam boards to some questions posed in advance by attendees and share some reminders from boards about the wealth of support they offer.
- In particular we discuss the issues around tiering and how to use the information from the SAMs and other assessments that you have done or will do.
The Recording
The slides
Many thanks to the contributors for sharing their slides. Here is pdf version: grading + exam webinar for website
Helen Myers’ blogpost: Sunday, 7 December 2025
This blogpost has links to these downloads:
- Excel data sheets compiled by David Blow
- Helen’s AQA + Edexcel ‘formative criteria’ booklets
- Helen’s analysis of AQA ‘full marks’ answer written samples
- Helen’s analysis of Edexcel ‘nearly full marks; answer – written sample
The chat
Thanks to the attendees who interacted with comments, questions and thanks – e.g.
- Julien Violette (Harris Federation): “ALL Webinars are always fantastic, so helpful, particularly in the current circumstances when we are in a transition period. Super reassuring to have a network of professionals to share experiences with, learn from theirs and continue to develop as teachers”
- Florence Barats: I queried the speaking timings with AQA and this is the answer I got so…. The recommended timings are exactly that. Some students will go through the tasks at pace, while others will need more time. The timings have been decided on to allow even the most hesitant of speakers to respond. That said, there is no need for the teacher-examiner to make up the time at the end of the exam with more questions. A student completing the role play, read aloud, short conversation, photo description and unprepared conversation in less than the overall recommended time will not be penalised, as long as all the content requirements are met.
- lots of thanks! – Thank you, wonderful!! So detailed! brilliant session! — that was hugely helpful! – Thank you very much. We have been doing this so very reassuring to listen to your talk. Many thanks.
