Here’s a piece I put together for last night’s webinar with key tske aways for teachers, Heads of Department and for Senior Leaders on the back of this year’s GCSE MFL results: senorcordero.wordpress.com/2026/08/28/g...

GCSE Outcomes – Key takeaways for teachers and for Senior Leaders

This is a piece I have written for teachers and leaders with some actions you might want to consider on the back of the GCSE results. I have a nicer, formatted version available I can share with yo…

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Want to know more about grading in MFL and to consider next steps? Join David Blow, Helen Myers, Catherine Ames and myself tomorrow at 7pm for an @all-london.org.uk webinar: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/exploring-... Please do share!

Exploring the results in the new GCSEs in French, German and Spanish

Looking at the differences in the approach for the new and previous specifications, and the implications for raw marks and grades.

eventbrite.co.uk

A little post on vision. senorcordero.wordpress.com/2025/08/17/y...

Your vision – an alternative pace stick to measure your impact

Many times in education we are asked how can we measure our impact – and the most logical response, given today’s climate, is through outcomes and progress values. I was of this opinion worki…

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Guadalajara

That’s my first year done. It’s been one tough old year in the MFL world: specification changes coming in whilst having to juggle the legacy specification one last time, pressures of having no grade boundaries and the push to report on pupil performance, recruitment is harder than ever…

Still time to apply! If you want the chance to share your insights and experience on a much larger scale, working with schools with wide and varying contexts to help ensure students get an ever-improving deal in language learning - this is the job for you. ce0374li.webitrent.com/ce0374li_web...

2025 provisional Ofqual entry data and languages: senorcordero.wordpress.com/2025/06/15/o...

Ofqual Provisional Entry Data 2025 – what does it mean for languages?

June 12th saw the release of the provisional entry data for GCSE and A Levels for the Summer 2025 season of exams. But what is the story for languages? What does it mean for French and German in pa…

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Want to work with MFL on a national scale? Looking to have impact on a much wider scale? Still plenty of time to apply. Closing date - 29th June www.tes.com/jobs/vacancy...

MFL Subject Adviser (North), National/Home-Based - Tes Jobs

United Learning, United Kingdom

tes.com

⭐️ Looking for a new role where you can champion the languages cause on a national scale? ⭐️ Interested in working with teachers, Heads of Department, Line Managers and Principals with the overarching vision of ensuring the provision of the best quality languages education possible for young people?

The outgoing spec: the positives, the negatives and what the future might hold. senorcordero.wordpress.com/2025/05/25/t...

The end of the 2016 MFL specifications: From controlled assessment to spontaneity, and what next?

The end of the 2016 MFL specifications – From controlled assessment to spontaneity  As the GCSE exams draw to a close for the outgoing specification and our eyes turn towards the first exams for th…

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Beyond thrilled for Sunderland ❤️🤍

Nothing worse than poor track etiquette making running dangerous for everyone else. One club of 10 people max using lanes 3 upwards; whilst about 30-40 people had to share lanes 1 and 2. Not fair.

Another great series from Eva Longoria following Searching for Mexico: this time it’s Searching for Spain! www.instagram.com/reel/DJebeWo...

Love this with Eva Longoria talking about her son correcting her spanish: www.instagram.com/reel/DJTnQ1c...

An update from the DfE. As a linguist it still really irritates me that we are obsessing so much over a prescribed list of words and grammar (as evidenced in the publication of this document) rather than getting our students to be able to communicate. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67b606...

I have recently spent some time looking at trends and tendencies of the outgoing MFL specifications using the Ofqual Analytics tool. It got me thinking very deeply about considerations when reporting for the new specifications. Here’s a new post on it. senorcordero.wordpress.com/2025/04/18/t...

The outgoing specification – trends and tendencies and looking towards reporting for the new spec

Grading and assessment in the new specification is on a lot of people’s minds – with pressures to report home from schools, and from parents, even though we do not have any indicative g…

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Always good to get to track and burn off any worry.

Didn’t make track on Tuesday as I was heading home. My best friend from my original club has the Chicago Marathon this weekend and is tapering so has agreed to coach me! Our first encounter was on a steep hill where she shouted: “Is that all you’ve got?!” at me. Still is my running hero to this day!

And what about the 4/5 that cannot afford it? That’s why I firmly believe we have the duty to fight that little bit harder for those who cannot access private tuition and that have as much of a right do succeed as anyone else. www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

Fifth of state pupils have private tutor at GCSE (and it’s not cheap)

Some have one helper per subject and there are even residential courses at £2,000 a week

thetimes.com

Time to head north

I’ll admit I’m very behind with the times with AI, though found out you could see your dog visualised as a human so did it with Blue. The result looks kind of like me…

Desperately trying to get Smokey and the team at Homies on Donkeys to put this into Spanish. Of incredible value to A Level students - the traditional v the new style of Mexican cuisine and the arguments between the two.

💡Don’t forget!💡 You can use our End of Year 10 assessments, geared for the new Edexcel GCSE French and Spanish assessments for FREE!

Use our 🇪🇸 and 🇫🇷 Y10 assessments for free! Aligned with Edexcel new spec, you’ll be able to use Smartgrade to receive analytics and add your data to the 55 schools in my trust so we can apply national distribution to create some notional grade boundaries. More info: unitedcurriculum.org.uk/assessment

I know how busy the summer term gets, so I wanted to let you know that we’re sharing our new Year 10 end-of-year assessments completely free this year. There’s no cost or commitment, and you'll save time! What’s included:

My latest blog - based on my presentation for @wendyadeniji.bsky.social on Tuesday - preparing Y11 for the final 400 metres (running pun FULLY intended) senorcordero.wordpress.com/2025/03/15/p...

Preparing Y11 students for the final lap

We talk about pace plans a lot when talking about teaching and learning, and being a keen runner, I absolutely love this analogy. One of the Regional Directors I work with refers to Year 11 as thre…

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Such a great day at Language World today. Had some fantastic ideas and heard some brilliant people speak - all of whom chase one thing - the best languages teaching for young people.

Reading between the lines - some of my learning from looking at mark schemes for the new specification and some classroom ideas: senorcordero.wordpress.com/2025/03/01/r...

Reading between the lines – Speaking

As a teacher, I won’t shy away from the fact I am incredibly results driven – because the grades that our students get are their tickets to their future. If we are going to get students to ge…

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Didn’t realise with BA Silver you could get into the Cathay Pacific lounge at Heathrow T3 - they have a chef for noodles and dim sum. Absolutely unreal!