School by school data on EAL pupils and teachers now available
Details on both the number and percentage of EAL pupils in each school, and the number of teachers employed to support them are available for the first time at the new 'Compare School' tool from the DfE.
By simply selecting a school or using the 'compare schools' feature, and clicking on the pupils and workforce tab, parents and others can see the number and percentage of EAL learners and also the number of EAL support teachers and other staff. So parents can see not only how many EAL learners are on roll but also the provision for supporting their learning.
The quality of the information depends on the validity of information entered as part of the school census and the school workforce census. In addition, EAL specialists centrally employed by a local authority but deployed in a school will not show up in this data.
If you are working in an LA or school it would be useful to alert schools to the fact that this feature is now available and that they should ensure they enter these staff properly in their returns to the 2011 School Workforce census on 3 November.
The guidance for this year shows this:
‘Teaching roles for school employed staff will normally be from the following list, but any of the roles in the codeset can be used:
Executive Head Teacher
Head of House
Head Teacher
Head of Department
Deputy Head
SEN co-ordinator
Assistant Head
Language support
Classroom Teacher
Minority ethnic support
Head of Year
LA Supply pool
Teachers of ethnic minorities should be assigned the role of “minority ethnic support” and teachers of English as a foreign language should be assigned the role of “language support”.’
Link to full document
While we may argue with the wording, it is important that EAL teachers and support staff are fully and accurately represented in schools' returns to the 2011 school workforce census which takes place on the 3rd November 2011. In this way, parents will be able to see what level of support their child might access to support their EAL learning.
