EAL register and assessment

[Martyn Pendergast]

I think that this is an issue that we revisit on a regular basis over the years and while I would strongly agree with Catharine's posting, I think that we need to ask ourselves one important question:

What is the purpose of assessment?

For me, the purpose of assessment is to identify the next steps in learning for the individual concerned. If that is the case, then the Hilary Hester stages give us virtually nothing in terms of possible curricular targets, being a series of rather general (and subjective) descriptions of behaviours. The NC levels, while not achieving the purpose of describing an EAL learner's acquisition of English, do at least reflect the taught curriculum and progression through particular skills related to literacy.

It is also true that NC English levels are not always very helpful in showing progress in acquiring subject-specific language other than in English; however, I would see it as the task of the EAL professionals to support departments in mapping the language structures and functions for their subjects - a huge task, but one that is not being carried out centrally. I personally have found the South Australian 'Scope and Scales' very useful to inform my own thinking, but the organisation by field, tenor & mode is often a step too far for other colleagues!

Keeping a register can be useful for keeping track of support allocations and intervention, but you do have to be careful about the messages it sends to the rest of the school: are you no longer an EAL learner when you are beyond level 2c?

I'm not sure that we will ever manage a consensus within this group, but we must ensure that assessment is understandable (to the pupils and our colleagues), that it is able to show progress, that it reflects the taught curriculum and that above all it can signpost what the pupil needs to do next.

Martyn Pendergast

[Frank Monaghan]

I think we'll only have agreement on this when we have an EAL curriculum and an EAL assessment system, just like the Australian bandscales.

The latest NC proposal set this back yet further with the complete invisibilsation of EAL. I think one reason this has been possible is because of the belief that a monolingually based NC is both necessary and sufficient whereas what the real world tells us is that it is neither.

Frank

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