The UK has begun development of an official GCSE school exam in Ukrainian. The new qualification will allow Ukrainian children who moved to the country because of the war to confirm their knowledge of their native language in the British education system. The first exams are planned to be held in 2029.
British exam organisation AQA, which the Department for Education commissioned to develop the new qualification, reported this on 4 November.
According to the preliminary schedule, teaching Ukrainian as part of the GCSE programme will start in September 2028, and the first exams will take place in summer 2029. Before this, the new qualification must be approved by the British education regulator Ofqual.
The exam is planned to be available to schoolchildren in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Not only children of Ukrainian migrants, but also other students studying Ukrainian will be able to take it.
The programme will involve assessment of four basic language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. During development of tasks, cultural and historical features of Ukraine will also be taken into account.
According to The Guardian, the British Department for Education has allocated 340 thousand pounds sterling for development of the Ukrainian GCSE.
The introduction of the exam is the result of several years of appeals from the Ukrainian government and community organisations. Previously, Ukrainian schoolchildren in the UK faced the fact that due to the lack of an official qualification in Ukrainian, they were offered to take exams in Russian.
Britain's Minister for School Standards Giorgia Gould, while visiting St Mary's Ukrainian School in London, apologised to children who found themselves in such a situation. She stressed that Ukrainian schoolchildren should be given the opportunity to study and officially confirm knowledge of their own language.
According to The Guardian, the question of introducing a Ukrainian GCSE was raised by representatives of the Ukrainian community on behalf of more than 30 thousand children who left for the UK after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
Ukraine's Minister of Education and Science Andrii Butenko welcomed the decision of the British authorities. According to him, a new exam will give Ukrainian children the opportunity to choose their native language as an academic subject and maintain a connection with their culture.
GCSE is a British system of school qualifications, exams for which are usually taken by students at the end of the compulsory stage of secondary education, approximately at age 16. The results obtained are used for further education and entry to educational programmes.
Currently AQA has to develop study requirements and exam materials jointly with teachers, Ukrainian language specialists and education regulators. The final conditions for taking the exam will become known after the programme is approved.
Based on materials from: AQA, The Guardian, Department for Education / FE News
