Hi everyone

I'm the head of languages of a school in Hackney and I feel really frustrated with the lack of acknowledgement of our diverse intake.

The modern languages currently offered by AQA and Edexcel are

Europe: French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Greek, Russian, Turkish (9 languages)

Asia: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Urdu, Bengali, Panjabi, Gujarati (9 languages)

Africa: Zero, Zilch, Nada. No Lingala, no Yorùbá, no Swahili not a SINGLE African language is on offer for GCSE

What does it say about our culture? We are denying our students the opportunity to obtain an additional GCSE in which they would be really successful (and which would count towards the EBACC combination) 

Two year 10 students approached me today to enquire about Yorùbá and felt deflated when I told them that their language wasn't recognised by the 2 exam boards. It's time for things to change and for "diversify the curriculum" to be more than a slogan, a reality