EAL Pupils and Assessment Without Levels

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 full- time 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 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.

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