Punjabi G.c.s.e/a-Level To Be Axed ?

[DailyMail]

Punjabi Faces The Axe In Britain

SARIKA SHARMA

[Taken from Sikhchic]

http://www.sikhchic.com/current_events/punjabi_faces_the_axe_in_britain

Exam boards in the United Kingdom plan to drop qualifications in Punjabi along with other languages. While the issue has worried scholars, it has become a political issue in the current British election season.

Punjabi is the third most spoken language in the country after English and Polish according to 2011 census.

If exam boards AQA and OCR go ahead as planned and discontinue GCSE's (secondary school level) and A level (college level) exams, foreign languages such as Polish, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Modern Hebrew, Turkish and Portuguese could face the axe.

Currently, Punjabi is an exam option that students can take at GCSE/A-level. Usually it is not offered at schools, but in many cases, like in Newcastle, one can take the exam at a gurdwara. Generally, a GCSE/A-level has to be offered officially through a certified exam board, main ones being AQA and OCR.

Punjabi scholars are wary of the development.

Dr Navtej Kaur Purewal, Deputy Director of South Asia Institute, SOAS University of London, says the move is a sign of the times.

"Modern languages are still widely associated with European languages such as German and French, while languages such as Punjabi are given lesser status and viewed as community languages. The irony is that in the 2011 Census, Punjabi was the 3rd most widely spoken language in the UK, having dropped from being 2nd in the 2001 Census due to the rise of Polish which has overtaken Punjabi," she says.

Navtej insists that this warrants more support of such languages and recognition of their presence in the UK. Even as she somewhere blames it on a trend amongst aspirational South Asian parents and students to value English more than languages of ancestry, she says the decline in uptake of Punjabi and other South Asian languages at GCSE and A level should be addressed by the examinations system, not viewed as a sign of a dwindling market.

Founder member of the Punjab Research Group, Prof Eleanor Nessbit, who is also professor emeritus University of Warwick, says it is sad that in a country in which the majority are monoglot English-users, members of bi- and multi-lingual minorities are not protesting more loudly at the reported disappearance of public examinations in their heritage languages.

"If families, schools and community organizations, such as gurdwaras, had pulled together to ensure that children were studying their 'mother-tongues', the sheer number of enrolments for GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations would have ensured their survival to that level and possibly, beyond this, to A level. Sadly, many young British South Asians never get beyond a very limited fluency in spoken Gujarati, Punjabi, etc.," says she who studied Hindi for O and A level.

Prof Eleanor too says it is regrettable that language classes and qualifications that could have helped bridge communities are under threat.

Dr Shinder Singh Thandi, principal lecturer in economics at Coventry University in the UK, says the issue of termination of some minority languages from the curriculum was announced by the department of education quite a while ago and some Punjabi teachers had raised the issue with their gurdwaras to follow up but nothing was done.

"It is worth pointing out that many Punjabi children only do Punjabi up to GCSE level and very few continue to the Advanced level. So in a way there is not going to be a significant change as most Punjabi children had already chosen to opt out of it," he says and adds that the culling of some languages does not surprise him as there wasn't much uptake and cost of offering them were high.

Also students aspiring to go to University focus on only 3 Advanced Level subjects which are regarded highly by universities in their admission criteria and these are usually science subjects and some core subjects such as economics and history.

Meanwhile, the Labour party has given it political colour. Punjabi MP from Ealing Southall, Virendra Sharma wrote to Tristram Hunt, shadow secretary of state for education, to raise awareness of the terrible threat the Tory government was posing to language A level qualifications.

He wrote: "This Tory government has chaotically changed the curriculum at a time when languages are needed most by British business. Communities thrive in Britain where people are bi-lingual, providing a link to their past while embracing modern Britain."

Following this, Hunt last week, spoke to the House of Commons and called for the education secretary to resolve the mess.

Dr Shinder Singh says it is not surprising that this should be raised as a political issue by the Labour Party as they are facing a challenge in holding on to the ethnic minority, especially Punjabi community votes.

THE CONSEQUENCE

Dr Navtej Kaur says that even if the languages will be withdrawn from the curriculum, these languages will remain spoken and taught at home and in large numbers without the literacy and expertise which a formalized system or learning can and has provided.

"At present, most students taking the exams in Punjabi are doing so outside of school in any case, for instance in community centres or gurdwaras. We should be mobilizing for these languages to be recognized by schools, especially with considerable South Asian populations, to have better infrastructure. Instead, they are withdrawing them altogether. It will be a tremendous loss if these languages disappear from the curriculum," she says.

[Courtesy: Times of India. Edited for sikhchic.com]

April 8, 2015

[DailyMail]

As a chap in my mid-30's and a holder of GCSE punjabi, this news saddens me. I have been out of touch with punjabi teaching in gurdwara's or in my case, a junior school in Hounslow Heath in the 90's on Wednesday evenings. However, I had no idea that demand had dipped? I presumed demand was on the rise? Especially with the recent influx of Afghan Sikhs?

[JagsawSingh]

Want to know the true state of us ?

There is reality and then there is maya.

While 100,000 of versions of me walked in unison today in Southall during our nagar kirrtan hardly any of us knew nothing at all. For we are khalsa. We are supposed to know everything.

The BBC website: Oh that news website that is always 2 steps behind the American NPR news website and finally, 3 days after the American NPR news report a diluted version of what is going on.

Sounds bad doesn't it ?

Yes its bad. All the more reason to see how low we have sunk. 2 weeks ago the internet was full of stories about how Polish mothers and fathers in the UK were organising themselves to fight the decision to stop Polish exams. The news also stated how languages such as Punjabi and Bengalsi were also being scrapped.

2 weeks of silence.

Cue; tumbleweeds tumbling.

Thats what we are. We're idiots that spend our time complaining about 'eastern european' immigrants without realising that it is those eastern european immigrants that have been, for the last 3 weeks, fighting our fight on our children's behalf.

Recap:

1. Punjabi being scrapped was announced 3 weeks ago
2. In those 3 weeks eastern europeans in the UK have been fighting so much on our behalf that they actually made the BBC newswebsite.
3. During the same period most UK Sikhs spent their time either nowhere or 'here' where they spent their time crticising eastern europeans.
4. Oh those dirty eastern euopeans that spent their time fighting for our children more than 2 weeks before we even realised there was a problem.

5th week.

Now that were in the 5th week and we Sikhs have finally caught...............what we gonna do ?

[kamc]

I never did a Punjabi GCSE, i learnt old skool, at the Gurdwara in Punjabi school with a chapal and i haven't forgotten since but on a serious note, I wish the writer of that article had done his research, there are no plans to phase out GSCE's like Punjabi, they are being modified to tie in with new government regulations, I hate stuff like this, if you look at the source of the article is the Times Of India, hardly a relevant source when it come's to matters in the UK.

[DailyMail]

Launch of Petition to Save Punjabi Language Examinations

POSTED BY JOHN MCDONNELL 32PC ON APRIL 08, 2015

http://www.john-mcdonnell.net/launch_of_petition_to_save_punjabi_language_examinations

In the last week of Parliament it was revealed that some Academic Qualifications Awarding Bodies were dropping Punjabi from their lists of examination subjects at GCSE and A Level. This is part of the Coalition Government's reform of educational qualifications.

John McDonnell, who founded the All Party Punjabis in Britain Parliamentary Group, has launched a nationwide petition calling upon the incoming Government to act to ensure that Punjabi is maintained by the Qualifications Awarding bodies as a GCSE and A Level examination subject.

John said " Learning the Punjabi language is critically important to preserving Punjabi culture and also helps equip many of our young people with the language skills they need in the modern world. Withdrawing Punjabi from the list of examinations taken at GCSE and A Level will undermine the teaching of this subject which is dear to the hearts of so many of our people. I am calling upon the incoming Government to intervene to ensure the preservation of Punjabi as a GCSE and A Level subject. I am asking people to sign our nationwide petition to support our campaign to save the teaching of the Punjabi language."

[DailyMail]

Kamc,

This is happening. The Times of India is correct in this regard. It is no wonder therefore, that the great champion of Sikh, Punjabi and moreover humanitarian causes, Mr John McDonnell MP for Hayes & Harlington has launched a petition to lobby the government.