In a recent report in the Daily Telepgrah (21.03.12) Anastasia De Waal, head of Family and Education at the think tank Civitas, called for changes in the way schools are organised in order to respond to the needs of the 1 million plus pupils learning EAL in UK schools.
The Telegraph articles highlights interesting changes which have taken place in the English school population, including the doubling of EAL pupil numbers since 1997. In the article, Anastasia De Waal is quoted as saying
'It is vital that schools are organised in such a way to adequately accommodate pupils who start school in the UK with weak English language foundations. In our often highly standardised classroom situations schools are frequently asked to side-step language barriers. This significantly and needlessly hampers the progress of those children without secure English, as well as the progress of their peers.'
Across the UK there are more than 1 million pupils learning and EAL and classification of, and provision for, these pupils differs across the nations. In Wales, the 22,930 EAL pupils are classified according to one of five language stages. In Northern Ireland, 8418 pupils at early stages of learning EAL are classified as 'newcomer' pupils. In Scotland, funding for their 24,555 EAL learners is viewed as part of Additional Educational Needs. In England, 946,580pupils are classified as having a first language which is, or is believed to be, other than English and funding for their language learning needs has been mainstreamed into general school funding.
Almost 1m schoolchildren in England speak English as a second language (Daily Telegraph, 23.03.12)
