The government has awarded AQA £340,000 to develop a Ukrainian GCSE. Schools minister Georgia Gould apologized to refugees urged to study Russian. The planned qualification is expected to be taught from September 2028, with first assessments in 2029.
The UK Department for Education has awarded exam board AQA £340,000 (about $460,000) to develop a Ukrainian GCSE, a school qualification that is not yet available.
At St Mary’s school in west London, UK schools minister Georgia Gould apologized to Ukrainian refugees who had been urged to take Russian GCSE in the absence of a Ukrainian option. Ukraine’s education ministry had raised the issue in a 2024 letter, saying school staff were pressuring Ukrainian children to take Russian.
First teaching is expected from September 2028 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with the first assessments in 2029. The qualification is planned to be open to all pupils.
The GCSE will assess listening, speaking, reading and writing, as well as recognizing the cultural and historical contexts that shape Ukrainian. AQA will bring together language and subject experts to design it.
Gould said exam boards had been nervous about developing a qualification for a relatively small group of pupils, and that government funding was intended to make it possible. She also encouraged British children to study Ukrainian as an act of solidarity.
Ukrainian government and community groups had lobbied for the qualification for years. More than 30,000 Ukrainian children have fled to the UK, The Guardian said. Inna Hryhorovych, head of St Mary’s Trust, has called for a Ukrainian GCSE since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. She said it was still hard to comprehend that they no longer needed to fight for it.
At the school, Gould apologized personally to Vitalii Andronik, now 20, who had told The Guardian in 2024 that he was urged to study Russian as a 15-year-old refugee. Andronik welcomed the apology and qualification, saying it was too late for him but that he wanted future generations of refugees to study Ukrainian. He described the apology as recognition of the trauma refugees had experienced.
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Sofiia Chonka, 16, who fled to London with her family in June 2024, said she refused a suggestion to study Russian in year 9. She said she would take the Ukrainian exam when it became available and welcomed the opportunity for younger friends. Chonka, who has just started A-levels, said she was saddened that it had taken so long.
Hryhorovych said her next campaign would seek a Ukrainian A-level, a qualification usually studied after GCSEs. Gould said the government was concentrating on GCSEs for now and would see how the new qualification went.
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