yeh its built in.. arabic would go down without the bonus points!!
languages can be a bit unfair sometimes, because the thing with arabic is, since there is probably a greater number of native speakers or people that speak it at home than say french.. they are likely to do well in arabic, but only do averagely in other subjects.. this makes it look like arabic is uncompetitive, and therefore the scaling brings it down. therefore making it IMPOSSIBLE for anyone that doesnt speak it at home or natively to have a chance of getting a good score because its actualy not uncompetitive, its of a very high standard for whats supposed to be a second language study.
same sort of thing happens with greek i think, athough it does go up a little bit thanks to bonus points.
your fine because you speak it at home anyway, therefore are on that playing field with the others there, but imagine someone who didnt, or imagine someone like that trying to do greek or something as well. doesnt work well
thats why id be sticking to languages like german and french for people with no second language at home. small number of native speakers doing it, and also a lot of people that go very well in their other subjects do them. i wish id done two languages, german aand french