Sally - your comment raises a crucial ethical question for the field of ESOL. That is - whether practitioners should volunteer, or work with volunteers, or with organisations which work with volunteers, at a time when other ESOL professionals' jobs are at risk as a series of savage cuts slash through statutory-funded provision.
Some might take the view that to be involved with voluntary ESOL provision is to be complicit in central Government neglect of the ESOL sector. Others might feel that in the absence of meaningful central Government policy (and funding) they should continue to support the people who are most in need of access to ESOL classes, even if that means working with volunteers if there is no state money available to pay teachers. They might also feel that this does not preclude their involvement in campaigns for fully funded ESOL classes.
My own position for the past decade has been that English language classes should be provided for adult migrants from the point of their arrival in the UK. This position has empirical support. The ESOL Effective Practice Project, which I worked on with colleagues from 2004 to 2007, concluded that the longer people remain in the UK without accessing English language classes, the more barriers to learning they face when they do get into a class, and the slower their progress is. That is, new arrivals need adequate provision straight away (http://www.nrdc.org.uk/publications_details.asp?ID=89).
A prominent, ongoing and at least partly effective campaign against cuts to ESOL has been the Action for ESOL movement. This was set up in response to a series of cuts to funding which, with each swing of the axe, has excluded more and more categories of people. Central points of principle enshrined in the Action for ESOL manifesto are that ‘In order to maintain high-quality ESOL, funding needs to be persistent and sustained and not vulnerable to the whims of political administrations. Rather, people who need English language education to live and work in the UK should have a statutory entitlement to ESOL.’ Moreover, ‘funding should be based on the needs and aspirations of students, access to ESOL should be independent of immigration status, and ESOL classes should be free to all’ (http://actionforesol.org/action-for-esol-manifesto). Activists continue to campaign on these fundamental issues.
But adult migrants to the UK have never been entitled to free, funded ESOL classes from the point of arrival. From today's perspective, provision appears to have been relatively generous at the height of ESOL as a Skill for Life - from 2003 to 2006 or so. Since then statutory-funded ESOL has been eroded first by New Labour, then more rapidly by the coalition. The current government appears to have the aim of killing off funded ESOL altogether, despite Theresa May's pre-election promise of a 'significant increase' in money for English language training (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32013794). It is not a good time to be an adult migrant, newly arrived in the UK, hoping to gain access to an English class.
Cuts to ESOL, and to FE in general, mean that FE colleges are unable to provide the classes they once did, waiting lists are lengthening, and ESOL teachers in FE are losing their jobs. Then as now, local charity organisations and the private sector are filling a perceived vacuum of need. In many ways ESOL finds itself returning to the position of the 1970s and 1980s, with isolated pockets of practice, some laudable and some indifferent, but disconnected, and often staffed by volunteers or the very poorly paid. The difference is that today the number of potential students is higher and the need is greater. Another issue is that today’s Government policy entails more than simply the voluntary sector setting itself up to bridge a gap. Government funding itself (e.g. the recent DCLG funding) requires the winning bids to show how they will be sustainable beyond the life of the funding. For most, this requires employing volunteers. So the Government is not only relying on volunteers, but is also promoting their use, and in so doing, contributing to the deskilling and deprofessionalisation of the field. Despite this, some organisations do find principled ways of working with volunteers, for example by ensuring they gain a qualification, get paid expenses, are recognised as full members of the organisation, receive proper support and mentoring and perhaps have the possibility of being prioritised for employment should a post arise.
I chair a group in Leeds called MESH - Migrant English Support Hub. MESH is a consortium of ESOL providers, local government officials and academics who have recognised the need for coordination for ESOL in Leeds. MESH was set up in response to findings from a project I led in 2011/12, the HENNA project. HENNA concluded that ‘Patterns of ESOL provision, funding and attendance are complex, and pertain beyond the neighbourhood boundaries to the city as a whole. The general picture is one of fragmented ESOL provision locally and city-wide which is in urgent need of coordination. ... An overarching conclusion is that the erosion of the cohesive framework afforded by Skills for Life is likely to lead to a return to the fragmented picture of ESOL provision of previous times’ (http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/research/projects/henna-project).
This has indeed come to pass. Since 2013, MESH colleagues have been working on the Learning English in Leeds website (www.lel.help). This is a dynamic online resource which aims to list details of all English language provision in the city, whether it takes place in FE colleges, charities, private language schools and training centres, or universities. Prospective students, and those who advise them, can use LEL to identify classes near them, searching by postcode or by category (e.g. type of provision). Crucially, large but over-subscribed ESOL providers such as Leeds City College can direct the very many people on their waiting list to LEL, enabling them access to classes that the college itself can no longer provide, perhaps on the understanding that something is better than nothing.
Many of the providers listed on the LEL site hold classes taught by volunteers. I agree that this is undesirable in principle: I regard voluntary sector ESOL not as a reasonable policy but as an indication that policy has collapsed. But it is inevitable that those who identify a need will step in when the Government fails to discharge its responsibilities. Quality of provision in Leeds, which is not the direct concern of MESH, is patchy. Some voluntary sector providers, catering for students on the very margins of precarity, work diligently to provide training for their teachers. These organisations themselves need students to find them, so they can continue operating at a time when funding is as uncertain for the third sector as it is for state-funded ESOL. This, we feel, is where MESH can help not just adult migrant would-be language learners but the organisations that support them, even while the learners themselves are ever more marginalised by the centre.
So to return to Sally's point: Should we be supporting voluntary sector ESOL (for example by putting in place city-wide coordination or by supporting a voluntary ESOL programme that is reaching the most in need)? Or should we avoid engagement with the voluntary sector because such engagement makes us complicit in the failed policies of a Government that couldn't care less.
People's views will differ on this point. My personal position, which I know is shared by many members of the MESH consortium here in Leeds, is that we can and perhaps should do both. That is, we can continue to campaign in any way we are able for a funded and professionalised ESOL sector, while doing our utmost to ensure those most in need of provision get something.
I would very much like to hear the thoughts of others on this.
James
Dr James Simpson
Senior Lecturer (Language Education)
School of Education
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
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New book: Adult Language Education and Migration: Challenging Agendas in Policy and Practice
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-----Original Message-----
From: ESOL-Research discussion forum and message board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sally Doman
Sent: 22 July 2015 21:14
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A further cut to ESOL from September -
Laila,
I don't think we should be celebrating the use of volunteers to deliver ESOL provision at a time when many ESOL tutors are losing their jobs because of these government cuts. If the money used to deliver SPEC (and other such projects) had been used to fund proper ESOL classes, REAL people I know would not be spending their summers worrying about how they will pay their rent come autumn. We need to continue to fight against the use of volunteers in, and the deprofessionalisation of, the ESOL sector.
Sally Doman
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ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds.
To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit
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