Diversify the language offer for GCSE

[LeukaeLucky]

Hi everyone

I'm the head of languages of a school in London and I feel really frustrated with the lack of acknowledgement of our diverse intake.

The modern languages currently offered by AQA and Edexcel are

Europe: French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Greek, Russian, Turkish (9 languages)

Asia: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Urdu, Bengali, Panjabi, Gujarati (9 languages)

Africa: Zero, Zilch, Nada. No Lingala, no Yorùbá, no Swahili not a SINGLE African language is on offer for GCSE

A change is long overdue
Can I please ask you to sign this petitionYorùbá and other African languages for GCSE

Arabic is spoken in some African countries.

I can see where you’re coming from, and in an ideal world every student would have access to all the language GCSEs that exist. In reality, most students only have a choice between two or three languages at their schools anyway.

True. However what I'm referring to here is not taught languages but languages offered for GCSE. Community languages are an opportunity for native speakers of a language to obtain a reward in said language IYSWIM.
In short, it doesn't add recruitment or training pressure, it just gives a recognition in a skill (and counts towards the ebacc)

I’ll sign it. I agree with you, there is no reason why they shouldn’t feature as GCSE exams.

Thanks🙏