Enfield’s councillors overcame party loyalties to unanimously support the motion, which urged the Education Secretary to apply pressure to reverse what they called a “short-sighted decision”.
Turkish will not be taught in secondary schools from 2017 because of the OCR examination board’s decision to discontinue the subject. GCSE Turkish will also be scrapped at the same time.
In an emergency motion discussed at a meeting last week, councillors backed a Londra Gazete petition that has gathered more than 2000 signatures in just ten days.
AYFER ORHAN AND TERRY NEVILLE
The motion was moved by Labour’s Ayfer Orhan, cabinet member for education, and seconded by Terry Neville, the leader of Enfield’s Conservative opposition.
It said: “This Council calls for cross part support of the 20th March online petition by Londra Gazette against the short sighted decision announced by the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Exam Board (OCR) to drop the Turkish Language ‘A’ Level examination, particularly as there is strong evidence that the participation of students sitting the Turkish Language exams are higher than for German of Spanish which will not be discontinued.
“Given that Turkish is one of the most spoken languages in Enfield, this Council calls on Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, to apply pressure on OCR into reversing the decision to scrap ‘A’ Level Turkish Language and also calls for pressure to be applied into reversing the decision to scrap other language subjects that have been dropped.”
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The motion was unanimously agreed with full cross-party support.
Figures from the most recent census in 2011 revealed that Enfield is home to Britain’s largest number of first language Turkish speakers and the largest number of residents born in Turkey.