site.btaBulgarian Language Recognition in UK Schools Discussed at British Parliament Event

An event dedicated to the Bulgarian language and traditional Bulgarian cuisine was held at the British Parliament on 18 May at the initiative of Bulgaria’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Tihomir Stoychev. The meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Bulgaria focused on efforts to secure official recognition of Bulgarian as a matriculation subject in the UK education system, Simona Zaharieva, spokesperson of the Association of Bulgarian Schools Abroad, told BTA on Thursday.

The event brought together members of the Bulgarian diplomatic mission, representatives of Bulgarian organizations in the UK, and British parliamentarians including James Asser, Lord Philip Smith, Deputy Speaker Caroline Nokes, Martin Vickers, Lord John Randall and Richard Baker.

In his address, Ambassador Stoychev stressed the importance of preserving the Bulgarian language among young Bulgarians born and raised in the UK. “It is important for us to do everything possible for Bulgarian to become a matriculation subject through the introduction of GCSE and A-level exams in Bulgarian, just as they already exist for Western European languages, Russian, Polish and others,” he said. He noted that more than 70 Bulgarian schools operate across the UK, including around 17 in London.

Information supporting the proposal was presented to James Asser and Lord Philip Smith. The initiative argues that Bulgaria’s standardized Bulgarian-language certification system, developed by the Department for Language Education at Sofia University and accredited by ALTE, could be recognized as equivalent to GCSE and A-level qualifications in the UK. “Recognising level B1 as equivalent to GCSE and B2 as equivalent to A-level would guarantee equal educational rights for students who speak heritage languages, in this case Bulgarian,” the proposal states.

During the event, Yordanka Velkova, a lecturer in Bulgarian language, literature and culture at University College London and at the UK Foreign Office language centre, delivered an interactive presentation on the significance of the Cyrillic alphabet and the Bulgarian language. She also presented a video greeting from British Ambassador to Bulgaria Nathaniel Copsey.

At the end of the presentation, two British students from UCL, Edita Allen-Jones and Harvey Smith, who excelled in Bulgarian language and literature exams, recited in Bulgarian the full text of the hymn dedicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius, the creators of the first writing system for Slav languages.