primary school problem

[Ann Horton]

Hi everyone

I'm hoping for some help for a year 3 Kurdish boy who came to England about a year ago.

Since (finally!) retiring nearly 3 years ago from my teaching post as EAL coordinator, I have become part of Cheltenham Volunteer Teachers - we work mainly with Syrian refugees, as Cheltenham is an official "sanctuary town" for refugees.

One of our members is at present helping the boy mentioned above. Because of his age as well as his refugee status, he had no formal schooling before coming to the UK. However, he appears to be at least of average intelligence and is making good progress with his English.

However, the school he attends has placed him in the support / "remedial" group, which apart from him consists of pupils with special needs, often including behavioural issues. He is therefore not getting the appropriate intellectual stimulation nor good English from his peers and is falling further behind where the "normal" level of the class is. He himself has said that he learns much more from his tutor than in school, although he is happy to be at school.

His parents have given both written and spoken authorisation for his tutor to talk to the school about him, but the school are refusing to engage with the tutor because of "data protection" issues!

Because the boy did not attend school in his homeland, there is no proof of his intellectual level, like previous reports, for example.

Of course I know from experience that this kind of treatment of low-level EAL pupils is far from unique!

Does anyone have any helpful suggestions of a way forward for the tutor concerned, in order to try to help get the boy into a group which will help him make better progress? Obviously I do not know the exact situation of the school concerned, but as they are refusing to engage with a duly-authorised tutor, it is hard to know how to make any progress here. As an example of their attitude, when the tutor helped him to learn 5 of the multiplication tables, he was told that his group only needed to know the 2 and 5 times tables....so no encouragement to make progress!

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to make sure I gave a fair description of the situation.

Ann

[ericarfield]

Hi Ann,

I've tried to reply once already - so apologies if you get two responses! The situation sounds really tricky.

Could a TALC (test of abstract language comprehension) assessment help in home language? TALC is based on the Language of Learning Model proposed by Bank, Rose and Berlin back in 1978.  It allows a child or young person to show what they can do with language, such as solve a problem, justify a decision, identify the cause of an event, make an inference from an observation etc.  We have been using them, with interpreters, with a range of  children and young people, including those with no previous educational history.  It sounds very formal but I promise that it isn't.  It's been useful for a school to see the abstract language skills the child already possesses.

We use the Elklan resources.

All the best

Erica

[Graham Smith]

It sounds like the kind of school that might crumble under a letter explaining the Equalities Act 2010. The school has clearly not exercised "due regard" in relation to the boy's protected characteristics (certainly race and possibly religion). You might also want to tell them that a judge is very likely to laugh at the pathetic data protection excuse. If you get a reputable solicitor to write the letter, I think they'll back down very quickly. A less abrasive way of tackling this is to ask for their Equalities Policy and then explain to them how they are failing to carry it out or that it fails to comply with the law. Good luck!

Best wishes,

Graham

E: graham...@theealacademy.co.uk

W: www.theealacademy.co.uk

Twitter: @EALACADEMY

    

--
This group is managed by NALDIC, the UK's EAL Professional Association. Please visit our website for further information: www.naldic.org.uk. Twitter: @EAL_naldic. NALDIC's Privacy Policy | https://naldic.org.uk/privacy-policy
 
National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum
A Registered Charity and Company Limited by Guarantee in England and Wales. Charity No 1110570. Company No 05159760
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "EAL-Bilingual" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to eal-bilingua...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/eal-bilingual/239295734.273066.1622035169646%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Susan Jaine]

Hello Ann,

 

Your situation is certainly tricky but it’s not unique, nor is it new. I had to deal with more cases like yours than I like to remember throughout the whole of my (paid) teaching career, in respect of both primary and secondary pupils.

 

Yes, there’s legislation, but I don’t think that’s the point at issue, and in any case I’m not sure that confrontation is likely to be helpful. The fact is that any school can place any pupil in any class, on the grounds that it’s the most appropriate placement for any one (or more) of a number of reasons. Have you heard “It’s a smaller group, where he/she can get individual attention” or “”He/She will be more able to do the work so won’t feel under pressure” or “We’d be happy to move him/her to a more academic class, but those classes are full at present, so perhaps when there’s a vacancy...” or “Maybe next year when his/her level of English has improved” or – well, the list of ‘reasons’ is endless. No amount of shouting from anyone is going to force a change.

 

What can effect a change, in my experience, is calm and forward-looking discussion. Is there a designated link person – e.g. the SENCo or the EAL Coordinator (if the school has one) with whom the boy’s volunteer tutor could have a preliminary informal chat? You say that the boy is happy to be at school, and that’s a positive sign, but it could perhaps be stressed that he could be even happier, and making better progress, if he were in a group where he had better models of learning and English language use and classroom behaviour. If his parents could ask to discuss their son’s placement with his class teacher (asking that his volunteer tutor and an interpreter if needed be present), they could hear what the school’s reason for the placement is and explain why they’d like the school to reconsider. As their son hasn’t, due to circumstances, had an opportunity to access formal schooling, they may be glad that he has that access now, and worry about rocking the boat. If the discussion focuses on doing what’s best for the pupil – and for the school – in the longer term, it’s more likely to produce a rethink.

 

I’ve gone on long enough, so will close by mentioning that I’ve used this approach on behalf of learners of EAL of all ages and nationalities, and from a variety of educational backgrounds, and only failed to effect a change on one occasion (which was, frankly, my own fault for mishandling the situation). FWIW. Good luck!

 

With best wishes

 

Susan Jaine

--

[stephe...@hotmail.co.uk]

Hi Ann,

As well as my freelance work with Better Bilingual (www.betterbilingual.co.uk) I also currently work for 3 days a week as EAL Lead in a primary school in Cheltenham with a 30% BAME school roll and have helped the school to develop some good practice around inclusion and equality provision, including classroom practice for EAL learners. I would be happy to support the school whose practice you are rightly concerned about to develop their own learning around the needs of new to English learners, including those from Refugee and Asylum seeker backgrounds, inclusion and equalities.

I would be happy to share my school e-mail address with this school if they feel they would benefit from a local point of contact for such support.

Stephen Bray (Better Bilingual)

On Wednesday, May 26, 2021 at 2:19:33 PM UTC+1 aehor...@yahoo.com wrote:

[Ann Horton]

Many thanks for all those who offered suggestions of how to move forward in the problem of a primary school which was persisting in keeping a Kurdish year 3 boy in the bottom set and refusing to engage in discussion. 

I have passed all your suggestions on to the volunteer teachers concerned, and I'm confident that between us all we will find a way to solve this!

Thank you all once again!

Ann