UK apologises to Ukrainian child refugees over Russian GCSE

The UK government has apologised to Ukrainian child refugees who were told to study Russian in English schools, and has announced funding for a new GCSE in Ukrainian. Schools minister Georgia Gould made the apology and the announcement during a visit to St Mary's school in west London, according to The Guardian.

A GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) is the national school exam taken by pupils in England. The new Ukrainian qualification is being developed by the AQA exam board, with a £340,000 grant from the Department for Education. It is due to be ready in England in 2028.

Ukraine's education minister, Andrii Butenko, said the new GCSE would give Ukrainian children an equal opportunity to choose their native language as a GCSE subject. St Mary's is the centre of a network of 13 Ukrainian-language schools in the UK.

More than 30,000 Ukrainian children have come to the UK since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The Ukrainian government and Ukrainian community groups had lobbied for years for a Ukrainian GCSE. In December 2024, The Guardian reported that Ukraine was lobbying the UK government to give teenage refugees the chance to study a GCSE in Ukrainian.

The pressure on pupils to choose Russian was raised directly with the UK. In a 2024 letter to the Department for Education, Ukraine's education ministry said many Ukrainian children were being pressured by school staff to take a Russian GCSE because no Ukrainian GCSE existed.

Individual accounts have also been reported. Vitalii Andronik, now 20, was urged to study Russian GCSE when he was a 15-year-old refugee. Sofiia Chonka, 16, fled from Zakarpattia in Ukraine to London in June 2024, and was told to study Russian in Year 9. She refused.

Earlier reporting also described a case in the sixth form. In December 2025, a Ukrainian refugee was forced to drop out of a UK sixth-form college after saying she was put under pressure to study Russian.