Students and staff from Co-op Academy Leeds have been supporting to lead the campaign to pressure exam boards to introduce GCSE Romanian. There are currently over 20 heritage language GCSEs, yet there are no accreditation opportunities for multilingual students who speak Romanian - the UK’s third most spoken language.

On the 27th April the campaign held a meeting in the Houses of Parliament to make their case to MPs. Eduard Avadanei and Larissa Grec, Year 10 students, made speeches in front of 120 politicians, ambassadors, and journalists about why this injustice needs to be corrected and the impact this would have on their future opportunities. One MP present remarked that the students were ‘future politicians’. 

The students were a credit to the school, city, and wider Romanian community. Please find below images of Eduard making his speech, and alongside local MP Mark Sewards.