NALDIC noted comments by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, that: "Real communities are bound by common experiences...forged by friendship and conversation...knitted together by all the rituals of the neighbourhood... And these bonds can take time. So real integration takes time."
The role that specialist provision for English as an additional language (EAL) in schools can play in such cohesion is central to this aim. NALDIC believes all children have a right to specialist support to develop and improve their English language skills and should have access to well-trained, high quality, language-aware teachers and classroom assistants to help them learn in and through English, to be successful at school and go on to contribute to society and to the economy.
Amy Thompson, NALDIC Chair said
“NALDIC is concerned that changes to the funding of EAL in Local Authorities and schools will have the opposite effect. The changes will work against the Prime Minister's and all our hopes for an integrated Britain, not with them
What the removal of ring-fenced Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG) funding means is that there are now fewer specialists meeting the needs of children in our schools. The pupil premium is too diffuse to ensure that this group of learners’ specific needs can be properly met. We have already seen almost half of Local Authority EMA teams either disappear or be subsumed into non-specialist, generalist teams and all the indicators are that further cuts are on the way. Once you lose specialist skills it is very hard (and very expensive) to get them back.. What this means is that children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) will have a more difficult time in performing as well as their peers and so are less likely to make the contribution that they could.
Amy Thompson, NALDIC Chair, said:
"We are very concerned about the impact these changes on EAL learner support have already had. In order to achieve real integration, we ask the government to look again at the evidence and assess what could be done to ensure those individuals most disadvantaged get the specialist English language support they need."
"We look to Michael Gove and his team to ensure that EAL learners continue to receive the specialist English language support in schools and through Local Authority teams so that they can contribute to the kind of fair and integrated society that the Prime Minister says he wants”.
The full text of David Cameron's speech
