Hello all
You might be interested in having a look at the documents associated
with the London Skills for Life strategy. This is a collaboration
between the Learning and Skills Council, London Development Agency,
Jobcentre Plus etc, aimed at establishing a joint regional body for
Skills for Life. They are on the website of a consultancy that the
London Skills for Life Strategy has hired to help them draw up the
plans, JH Consulting.
Go to their website:
www.jhconsulting.org.uk
and follow the 'downloads' link for a number of downloadable documents
for this work:
The following are the key documents:
- London Strategic Action Plan for ESOL September 2006
- London Strategic Action Plan for Skills for Life July 2006 Update
(provides a more in-depth summary of all the work and progress to date)
- Evidence Base for ESOL
- Toolkit for matching provision against the SfL templates (Part 1
Guidance and Part 2 Blank Templates)
There are a number of critical questions about these documents. Here are
five for a start.
1. The strategy suggests that provision will be targeted at 'priority
groups'. Does this mean that some entitled groups will find provision
hard to come by? The non-priority groups, as far as my first reading of
this material tells me, include EU citizens from the new accession
states. Is there a move to exclude this group from entitlement to ESOL
provision? Leaving aside the arbitrariness of the priority/non-priority
distinction, this could mean the strategy falls foul of international
law. Article 14 of the European convention on the legal status of
migrant workers states:
"Migrant workers and members of their families officially admitted to
the territory of a Contracting Party shall be entitled, on the same
basis and under the same conditions as national workers, to general
education and vocation training and retraining and shall be granted
access to higher education according to the general regulations
governing admission to respective institutions in the receiving State.
"To promote access to general and vocational schools and to vocational
training centres, the receiving State shall facilitate the teaching of
its language or, if there are several, one of its languages to migrant
workers and members of their families."
2. The infamous ILP still has a role in the template. How does this
square with the wealth of findings, not least from the ESOL Effective
Practice Project research, that an ILP is not necessarily the most
appropriate document for identifying, analysing and catering for ESOL
learners' needs? We found on the EEPP that a focus on individual
learning and ILPs is at the expense of group processes and classroom
talk which are so central to ESOL teaching and learning, and cannot be
negotiated with low level language speakers. You'll be able to read all
about it when the EEPP eventually sees the light of day.
3. The 'template' for ESOL provision emphases on 'job-focused
provision'. This is redolent of the largely discredited thinking on
'survival English' teaching and materials. These methods and materials
were popular in the early years of communicative language teaching for
migrants in the 1970s, and seem to be making a bit of a comeback in the
Adult ESOL Core Curriculum and its associated materials. But we should
ask: Are ESOL classrooms simply spaces where migrants are prepared for
work?
4. Re: progression, there is an explicit demand in the template that
students progress a whole level in one year. Many learners, particularly
those attempting to acquire literacy for the first time as adults, and
in a new language, will simply not progress at this rate. What
contingency arrangements are in place to allow for progress that is at a
slower rate than that prescribed? Are there sanctions for providers
whose students do not progress by a level a year, even if neither they
nor their students can do anything about this?
5. For those of us living outside London (i.e. most of us), are there
any immediate implications? Is it the case that where London leads, the
rest of the country is bound to follow? Or is the situation in London so
distinctly different from the rest of the country that we needn't
concern ourselves with this?
Any thoughts?
James
----------------
Dr James Simpson
School of Education
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
UK
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http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff.php?staff=39
+44 (0)113 343 4687
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