The latest release from the DfE of GCSE attainment statistics highlights a worrying increase in the differences between the attainment of bilingual students and their peers at GCSE. The 2012 results indicate that the gap between bilingual students achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C tincluding English and mathematics has risen for the first time in more than 5 years. Coupled with widening gaps in attainment for bilingual children in the early years, NALDIC fears that spending cuts have begun taking their toll on the attainment of bilingual learners across England.
In 2012, NALDIC warned against complacency in 'narrowing the gaps' between the achievement of bilingual students and the achievement of monolingual pupils and urged the government to reverse changes to funding which have decimated the availability of EAL teaching support. Rather than heed this advice, from April 2013, funding for bilingual students will be further limited and capped at a maximum of 3 years. This is especially concerning when international and national research based evidence suggests that bilingual pupils and students require at least 5-7 years to reach the academic language levels of their English only peers.
Commenting on these results in the first statistical release, the DfE noted that ' When comparing the percentage achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics GCSEs or iGCSEs, pupils whose first language is English (59.2 per cent) performed better as a group than pupils whose first language is other than English (56.2 per cent). This is also true for the percentage achieving 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent, which is a reverse of the situation in 2010/11 when pupils whose first language is other than English performed better.'
First Language attainment gaps 2007/08 to 2011/12
| (English as a first language minus first language other than English) | 2007/08 | 2008/09 | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 |
| 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent including English and mathematics | 3.4 | 3.4 | 3.1 | 2.7 | 3.0 |
| 5 or more GCSEs at grade A* to C or equivalent | 2.0 | 1.2 | 0.2 | -0.4 | 0.5 |
The summary figures show that in 2012, 56.2 per cent of EAL and bilingual learners gained 5 A*-C GCSEs including English and Mathematics compared to 59.2 per cent of English only students. The figures for any 5 good GCSEs were 82.6 per cent for bilingual students and 83 per cent for English only students. Bilingual students in London were most likely to achieve 5 A*-C GCSEs including English and Mathematics, whilst those in Yorkshire and Humber were the least likely to do so.
The percentage of pupils in each group achieving the English Baccalaureate is broadly the same, with 16.2 per cent of pupils whose first language is English achieving this indicator compared with 16.0 per cent of pupils whose first language is other than English. The attainment gap now stands at 0.2 percentage points, having narrowed from 1.1 percentage points in 2010/11.
A higher percentage of bilingual students made expected progress in English than those whose first language is English. The gap widened by 1.8 percentage points from 6.9 percentage points in 2010/11 to 8.7 percentage points in 2011/12. The gap is wider for mathematics, although has narrowed between 2010/11 and 2011/12, from 12.2 percentage points to 10.1 percentage points.
There are more than a million children between 5–18 years old in English schools who speak in excess of 360 languages between them.
