Every year the BSL awarding body, Signature, publishes an Annual Statistics Report which tells us how many students have tried the BSL exams and what percentage of the students have passed those exams. We have just received the report for 2014-2015.

At Dot we keep records of our students results so we can compare our results with the national pass rate. In the year 2014 – 2015, in most units our results were above the national pass rate.

Across BSL Levels 1,  2,  3 and 4 Dot entered students for 10 units. In 8 out of 10 of those units Dot’s pass rate was above the national pass rate.

We are particularly proud of our 100% pass rate across all three Level 1 units. Nationally the Level 1 pass rates on unit 1 were 98% but drop to 83% and 84% on units 2 and 3.

At Level 2 our units 1 to 3 pass rates were: 90%, 100% and 75% compared with the national profile of:  81%,  82%  and 79%.

Schools and colleges that offer BSL Level 3 have been disappointed by the poor results from this relatively new specification, this is its 3rd year. Dot is no exception. Unit 2, the receptive paper, has proved to be very challenging for all students across the country with only 35% passing this unit (40% of Dot students). We question whether the standard has been set at the correct level compared to the previous BSL Level 3 NVQ qualifications where the receptive unit achieved pass rates of 98%.  Although our Level 3 unit 1 results are a little lower, units 2 and 3 are at least 5% above the national figure .

The Annual Statistics Report for 2014 to 2015 gave us the first set of unit 1 results for the new BSL Level 4.  In the UK a total of 12 students took this BSL420 linguistics unit, four of these students were from Dot Sign Language. Of the 12 students in the UK, six passed the unit (50%). Three of the four Dot students passed (75%). So, although the numbers are small we are still very proud of our students achievement!

We are on target to improve our examination results even more in 2015 – 2016!