The UK Government has apologised to Ukrainian children who were encouraged to study Russian in English schools and announced funding for a GCSE in Ukrainian. The qualification is being developed by exam board AQA with a £340,000 grant from the Department for Education and is expected to be available in England in 2028.
Schools minister Georgia Gould said some Ukrainian pupils had been pushed towards Russian because there was no GCSE in their native language. “I’m really sorry that they were put in that position,” she said, adding that access to a Ukrainian GCSE was important.
The announcement follows years of lobbying by Ukraine’s government and community groups. More than 30,000 Ukrainian children have fled to the UK, and Ukraine’s education ministry warned in a 2024 letter that some were being pressured by school staff to take Russian GCSE.
The new qualification was welcomed by former refugee Vitalii Andronik, who said he had been urged to study Russian when he was 15. He said the GCSE came too late for him but would give future generations the opportunity to study Ukrainian. Sofiia Chonka, 16, who moved to London from Ukraine in 2024, also said she would take the exam when it becomes available.
Ukraine’s education minister, Andrii Butenko, said the qualification would give children displaced by the war an equal opportunity to choose their native language as a GCSE subject. He said Ukraine would continue working with AQA and the Department for Education on its development.
The GCSE is being created with support from St Mary’s Trust, which runs a network of 13 Ukrainian-language schools in the UK. Its head, Inna Hryhorovych, said she had campaigned for the qualification since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. She said her next goal was an A-level in Ukrainian.
Gould said the government was focusing on the GCSE for now and hoped it would succeed. She also encouraged British pupils to take the qualification as a show of solidarity with Ukraine.
Sources: The Guardian Education.