Emergency Motion
Minutes:
The Mayor advised that he agreed to accept the following item as an emergency motion, with copies tabled for members at the meeting. This had been on the basis of the reasons for urgency provided in advance of the meeting.
Having welcomed the Mayor’s decision, Councillor Orhan moved and Councillor Neville seconded the following motion:
“This Council calls for cross party support of the 20 March 2015 online petition by Londra Gazette against the short sighted decision announced by the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Exam Board (OCR) to drop the Turkish Language ‘A’ Level examination, particularly as there is strong evidence that the participation of students sitting the Turkish Language exams are higher than for German or Spanish which will not be discontinued.
Given that Turkish is one of the most spoken languages in Enfield, this Council calls on Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, to apply pressure on OCR to reverse the decision to scrap ‘A’ Level Turkish Language.”
Cross party support was expressed for the motion although as a result of the debate, Councillor J. Charalambous moved and Councillor Neville seconded as an amendment the inclusion of the following additional wording at the end of the motion:
“and also calls for pressure to be applied into reversing the decision to scrap other language subjects that have been dropped.”
The amendment, as set out above was agreed without a vote, and the substantive motion (as amended and set out below) was then agreed unanimously without a vote:
“This Council calls for cross party support of the 20 March 2015 online petition by Londra Gazette against the short sighted decision announced by the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Exam Board (OCR) to drop the Turkish Language ‘A’ Level examination, particularly as there is strong evidence that the participation of students sitting the Turkish Language exams are higher than for German or Spanish which will not be discontinued.
Given that Turkish is one of the most spoken languages in Enfield, this Council calls on Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, to apply pressure on OCR to reverse the decision to scrap ‘A’ Level Turkish Language and also calls for pressure to be applied into reversing the decision to scrap other language subjects that have been dropped.”