Guide to the English Oral Exam

Taking the 2026 school-leaving exam with English as an exam subject – whether internal or external – means turning up for the oral exam with much more than just a store of subject knowledge. This, ultimately, is the message that, as an English teacher, I can certainly convey to students: nowadays, it is not enough to know grammar, literary texts or communicative structures. You need to demonstrate how you have matured, partly through the language itself.

The new examination system places greater emphasis on the three-year e-portfolio, a tool that many pupils have viewed as a bureaucratic obligation, but which is now proving its true value.

Filling it with meaningful experiences – extracurricular activities, projects within the Programme for Transversal Skills and Career Guidance (PCTO), which has since become School-Work Training (FSL), participation in cultural exchanges, Erasmus mobility schemes, and civic education initiatives in English – enables students to turn their interview into an authentic account of their personal journey.

It doesn’t matter which type of school you attended: a technical college, a vocational college or a language-focused sixth-form college. What matters is showing how English has been a constant feature of your education, becoming a key to understanding the world.

In light of this, I would like to emphasise one point: the 2026 school-leaving exam rewards insight, not mere recitation. Being able to reflect on how one has learnt a foreign language, on the difficulties one has faced, and on the intercultural skills one has developed, is an added value that the examination board can recognise as such.