Londra Gazete, the newspaper for the Turkish-speaking communities in London, today launches a campaign to rescue GCSE and A level exams in Turkish.
The examination board that offers the subject, OCR, said its decision to abolish the exams from 2017 was because of low interest in the qualification.
LOSING TOUCH WITH HERITAGE
But this newspaper believes language classes are the only way for children from Turkish-speaking families in the UK to keep in touch with their heritage.
It also argues the loss of Turkish qualifications will damage Britain’s future relationship with Turkey and Cyprus. As Nick de Bois, the Member of Parliament for Enfield North, told us last week: “we will need fluent, well educated people to build our relationship with Turkey [and] to do business with Turkey”.
LOSING TOUCH WITH TURKEY
He is right. Turkey is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and an important partner in politics and trade. Fewer Britons learning Turkish today means fewer Britons dealing with Turkey tomorrow.
Turkish is not the only subject to be scrapped by the OCR, with Dutch, Persian and Portuguese also being dropped. The UK Government is not directly responsible for the decision, but it wields huge influence over examination boards like the OCR and can apply pressure to reverse the decision.
THE GOVERNMENT CAN REVERSE IT
Mr de Bois has also secured a short debate in parliament on the issue of modern language teaching in schools. This will take place on the afternoon of Tuesday 24 March 2015. We urge all MPs with significant Turkish-speaking populations to contribute to this debate.
To support a growing lobbying campaign by the Turkish Language, Culture and Education Consortium of the UK, Londra Gazete has launched an online petition.
We invite all our readers to sign the petition at https://www.change.org/p/department-for-education-save-our-turkish-exams calling on Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, to lobby the OCR into reversing the decision to scrap GCSE and A level Turkish.
Thank you for your support.
