Well, it's nearly the end of the first classes going through the new controlled assessments for GCSE and my thoughts on this are thus: Overall, not too painful for teachers or students. We have given (in nearly all cases) our pupils three goes at speaking assessments, after initially planning for four. The first we did at the end of Y10 during gained time when we were able to get cover. The second oral CA was during the December mocks in Y11 and the last one is coming up in very early May, just before the deadline. Again we have managed to secure cover for them. We chose tried and tested topics: school, food and healthy eating, holidays and free time (depending on the class). We tried to choose topics which fitted in chronologically with our existing scheme. I couldn't see the point in going for more original topics. My feeling was that we can do more creative things outside the assessment system and that the safe topics would score good marks. Marking the spoken CAs has be...
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