GCSE in Bulgarian

[ailieva]

We are a group of Bulgarians who are campaigning to make a GCSE in Bulgarian available for all bilingual Bulgarian children. We are a bit lost, though, on what our first steps need to be for the Bulgarian language to be recognized. Do you have any idea how we can change that on an institutional level? Your support would be a strong boost for our cause. At the moment the languages are French, German, and Spanish, along with GCSEs in Arabic, Biblical Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.

I wouldn't have thought you have any hope to be honest- why do you think there should be a GCSE in Bulgarian? That would be a lot of work for exam boards, schools to invigilator etc for a very small number of children. Not to mention 3 more papers for children to sit when they already have a ridiculous number.

I think that you should contact the exam boards like AQA and Edexcel and find out if there’s a process to make this happen. For example can you prove how many Bulgarian speakers are in year 11 each year ? I suspect that proving sufficient demand will be the first step.

I wouldn’t use the phrase about it being available for “bilingual Bulgarian children” as it should be for anyone who speaks Bulgarian and wants a qualification to prove it.

There will be a Bulgarian language proficiency test to prove fluency

GCSE's are not meant for bilingual children though. They are meant for non native speakers who wish to learn a language.

Why do you think that anyone would support you wanting your bilingual children to get a GCSE in their own language?
I don't care if they do but schools have enough to do with very limited resources so there is no way I would support this. Everyone who has bilingual children would be trying to get a GCSE for their child and for what? If they speak the language then thats all they probably need to get a job that requires it and other than that its just an easy GCSE that most employers won't be impressed by.
I am bafffled as to why you think this is necessary

Anyone who is a native speaker ( and writer) seems to get a 9 in their own language. It does sometimes help an EAL student get into sixth form or university ( ie the number of passes) and it is a nice recognition of their own culture. I don't think that list will increase to be honest, there seems to a focus on the major world languages rather than recognising all languages.

At the moment the languages are French, German, and Spanish, along with GCSEs in Arabic, Biblical Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Italian, Japanese, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.

You are missing: Polish

thousand of kids every year are taking in UK GCSE in Polish language

There's also Bengali and Panjabi with AQA. They also offer modern Hebrew.

And GCSE Welsh is also offered.

Welsh is an official language in Wales so it's not quite the same. It has to be offered.

I agree entirely with you and yet lots of other languages are offered at GCSE when they must surely be taken by native speakers not by anyone who has only formally learned it as a second language.

It seems completely nuts and a total waste of time, but on the basis they are offered, why not Bulgarian too? 🤷‍♀️

That is not the case for all the Polish pupils sitting the exam, or anyone else. They all have English as an additional language

I hasten to add I am all for people learning and speaking as many languages as possible. But surely native speakers of eg Turkish or Urdu can either just say they are native speakers or, if they’re not completely fluent, just sit whatever proficiency exams already exist for their own language. Really no need for a GCSE!

well, it doesn't really help, as a GCSE in your first language will normally be discounted

A Bulgarian GCSE would be a bit pointless, if you want your children to do a qualification in Bulgarian, then presumably there are qualifications from Bulgaria they could do

I’m a language nut
the only people who would want to do GCSE Bulgarian would be the Bulgarian kids who presumably speak it at home and don’t have much to learn
GCSE MFLs are designed for English native speakers that want to learn a foreign language which is pretty different

you’d need teachers. Are there many qualified teachers in the UK who know enough Bulgarian to teach it? I’d hazard not

The native language GCSEs were introduced to inflate exam results for schools by bringing up the number of kids who got 5A-C.

A lot of my friends did Bengali/Russian/Turkish etc and they all said it was a waste of time

We are a bit lost, though, on what our first steps need to be for the Bulgarian language to be recognized.

A GCSE qualification is not about “recognition” - that sounds like more of a political decision than an educational one.

A basic and quick internet search shows me that a Bulgarian schools association in the U.K. probably did all of the groundwork in understanding the process for you.

Why not reach out to them?

Ultimately, subject comes down to education and economics. GCSEs get created and withdrawn. The next new language starts next year: BSL.

https://www.change.org/p/secretary-of-state-for-education-nicky-morgan-mp-petition-for-the-introduction-of-bulgarian-gcse-and-a-level-qualifications

You meant the other way round. The half Polish or children of Polish people are bilingual. Their native language is English . And to the various degree they speak Polish. They take GCSE in Polish.

Clearly you do not understand how the children of immigrants function when it comes to languages. In 99 percent they don't speak it as fluently as their parents. Hardly anybody is perfectly bilingual. There is always a dominance of one language. And in most cases it is the language of your school

Welsh GCSEs would not be discounted for pupils who have Welsh as their first language. They are the same level as English GCSEs for those with English as their first language, so they study books, films, poetry etc and take Welsh language and Welsh literature papers.

For those who have different languages such as Bulgarian as their first language any qualifications would only be meaningful if the language is studied in depth. Not just saying ‘I like football because it’s fun’ and ‘the library is on the left after you cross over the bridge’ (2 phrases that I remember from my GCSE French!).

Any new GCSE would have to be funded, and there would need to be sufficiently many candidates for the exam fees to cover the costs - unless you are willing to pay high exam fees.

I don't know how many candidates you think there might be; how many Bulgarian speakers there are, and how many of them are in schools that are willing to enter pupils for GCSE in their native language. Unless there is a school with a particularly large local Bulgarian population, it's very unlikely any school would provide any teaching, so it would up to be the kids and their parents to ensure they are prepared - they would need to be able to read and write (which is not always the case even if they speak fluently) and also to jump through the various hoops to score highly (eg making sure that they include a range of tenses in their writing. Most schools do little more than offer a mock exam - and marking that can be problematic (DD's school put out an appeal for parents to help the languages department mark mock exams for the languages they don't teach). For the speaking exam, the schools have to apply to the board for permission to use someone not on the staff (and not related to the pupil). That person also needs training to run the test effectively; the school might only consider that worthwhile if they have a fair number of pupils who speak the language.

The other thing to consider is that the GCSE does not really qualify you for anything. It would not prove your fluency for the purposes of a job where the language was required (and would probably understate a native speaker's proficiency). It might be more useful to take some sort of Bulgarian language proficiency exam than a GCSE.

About the only time that GCSE grade is useful is when applying for post-16 courses. As it will probably be extra to the GCSEs being studied at school, most students will not need it to meet the requirements - it will only come into play if they are one short on having enough good grades from their school subjects.

I can’t offer any useful advice, but I wanted to applaud your efforts and wish you the best. I can quite see the point of a Bulgarian GCSE. If I spoke Bulgarian, I would absolutely want to that to be recognised by a UK qualification. I would want to have a certificate as a recognised marker of my ability. I do envy bilingual children for having a skill from their upbringing rather than study at a later date, but that doesn’t make it any less of a skill on their part, and they should be able to get it recognised formally.

Anybody who was born in Uk and attended school in Uk from reception has English as their first language.
There is a difference between native speaker and bilingual. Most of children of immigrants speak the language of their parents but hardly anybody speaks it as fluently as English.