Transcript Document

EAL Pupils and Assessment
Without Levels
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The best pastoral care for students from the
most deprived backgrounds is a great set of
exam results
TES June 2015
At the end of Reception only 44% of pupils recorded as having
EAL achieve a good level of development (GLD), compared to
54% of pupils recorded as FLE. Expressed as an Odds
Ratio, the odds of achieving a GLD are 0.67 (or 33%) lower for
EAL pupils compared to FLE pupils. Put another way, for every
three FLE children who achieve a GLD only two EAL
children do so. Unsurprisingly, at the end of their first year of fulltime education children from homes where they may have had
less exposure to English on average achieve lower results than
those with FLE.
The association between EAL and achievement decreases
markedly in magnitude at later ages. Considering the summary
measures of achievement at each age, the OR at age 5 is 0.67, at
age 7 it is 0.73, at age 11 it is 0.81 and by age 16 it is only 0.90. Thus
by age 16 there is only a small gap on the headline measure (58.3%
of EAL pupils achieving 5+A*-C EM compared to 60.9% of FLE
pupils) and no gap at all for the broader measure of Best 8 points
score.
The achievement of pupils with EAL varies widely. Many of the factors
associated with risk of low achievement are the same for EAL as for FLE
pupils, e.g. Having an identified Special Educational Need (SEN) and the
intensity of the SEN, being entitled to a Free School Meal (FSM), living in
an economically deprived neighbourhood, being young for the year group
and being male. However other factors represent particularly large risks
among the EAL group including: Entry to England from abroad during the
key stage (as proxied by the absence of a prior attainment score), changing
school in the last two years of a key stage, Black African or White Other
ethnicity, and some specific first languages within these two ethnic groups
(e.g. among White Other Groups particularly low scores were noted for
students with Romanian, Lithuanian, Turkish, Portuguese and Polish recorded
as their home language). These differences by first language remain after taking
account of socioeconomic variables.
(Strand and Murphy 2015: EAL and Educational Achievement in England)
Another notable feature of the data is the strong difference in
results for reading and mathematics. EAL pupils’ scores in
maths assessments are higher than their scores in reading
assessments at every age. With respect to maths, the gap is
large at age 5 (OR= 0.67) and age 7 (OR= 0.76) but
decreases substantially by age 11 (OR=0.90) and
disappears completely by age 16 (OR=1.03)
It is reassuring that where EAL students have attended English schools for
the whole of a key stage they make greater progress than FLE students, and
indeed that by age 16 they have caught up with their FLE peers. However
such progress reflects a long history of considerable additional funding
being directed to address language learning needs, first in the form of
Section 11 of the 1966 Local Government Act and then from 1999 through
the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG). Until 2011/12 EMAG funding
was ring-fenced so it could not be spent on other activities, but these
protections have now been removed. A recent NASUWT Survey (2012) saw
over onethird of 147 school leaders confirm that resources for EMA and EAL
provision across their LAs was decreasing. Policy makers need to guard
against the danger of assuming the strong progress of EAL students is
inevitable; even if the level of need were not rising as rapidly as it is, there is
no guarantee that EAL students will continue to make such good progress
unless schools continue to receive, and to use appropriately, funding to
address EAL learning needs
In relation to school funding, the EAL flag may be a poor basis for
targeting funding. Funding can be focussed on the risk factors and
some of these, such as FSM, will be picked up by the Pupil
Premium Grant. However, other high risk factors, such as new
international arrivals, should also be funded. We note there is a
proposal in the March 2014 DFE consultation on ‘Fairer Schools
Funding’ to allocate £505 for any primary student and £1,216
for any secondary student who enters the English state school
system from overseas in the preceding three years (DFE, 2014).
The current results strongly support this proposal. We have
noted that concentrations of EAL can be very specific to small local
areas and schools, even if the total numbers are low in broader
geographic area, suggesting that funding should be targeted at the
schools, either directly or through redistribution by LAs.
It is proficiency/fluency in the English language that is the major
factor associated with variation in the attainment of students
recorded as EAL (Strand & Demie, 2005; Demie & Strand,
2006). Fluency in English is also the biggest factor influencing
the degree of support an individual student will require, and
schools need to be able to assess this need accurately using
their own procedures and expertise. However, we have been
able to point to various risk factors for low attainment among
EAL students. In most cases these are the same risk factors
as apply for FLE students, but it is notable that recent
international arrival, school mobility and particular first
languages groups within the White Other and Black African
ethnic groups are associated with much higher risks of low
attainment for EAL students.
The definition of EAL used in the NPD reflects exposure to a
language other than English at home or in the community, it
gives no indication of a students’ proficiency in the English
language. It is important that this is recognised. On the one
hand, the EAL group includes second or third generation ethnic
minority students who may be exposed to a language other
than English as part of their cultural heritage, but may use
English as their everyday language and be quite fluent in it. At
the other extreme it includes new migrants arriving in England
who speak no English at all, and may have varying levels of
literacy in their previous country of origin.
Everything you have seen
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www.collaborativelearning.org/ealhls.html