 |
 |
Many thanks from me too. An excellent summary. I do take note of the various points and will do my best to express them or those I feel confident in expressing as a generalist at the various events and meetings on ESOL that I attend. Re the points that pertain to UCU On pay as you all know we continue to campaign and fight for better pay and conditions for all FE and adult education lecturers. Of course ESOL along with other Skills for Life staff are part of that and I think we can make very good points about the way that work with the most marginal and disadvantaged tends to be undertaken by the most marginal of staff - part time hourly paid. On UCU campaign around further ESOL questions, those of you who are UCU members and I would hope you all are should be pressing for this through your branches and regions. You will be pushing at an open door although it may be that it may be part of a more general campaign around adult learning/education. I am putting a paper up to the national FE Committee on 20th June on cuts that we are beginning to pick as college funding allocations are known. This paper includes references to the lower level ESOL cuts. Finally could people let me know if you are picking up reports of scams around English Citizenship certificates being sold. I thought I had and am trying to find out if these had any substance Dan Taubman National Official UCU Colleges Department 27 Britannia Street London WC 1 X9JP Direct Line: 0207 520 3230 E-mail: [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: ESOL-Research discussion forum and message board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Simpson Sent: 11 June 2008 14:03 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: ESOL hot topics Hello all! A while ago Karen Dudley asked us to suggest some of the hot topics of ESOL, to feed into a discussion on 'visions and values of ESOL' at the forthcoming NATECLA conference in Warwick in July. Judging from recent posts on the ESOL-Research email list, and aside from the contentious debate over the spelling of 'devolved', I'd say that the current burning issues are as follows. Please comment or add your thoughts to these: 1. Provision of ESOL classes at lower levels. It is a disgrace that those most in need of ESOL tuition continue to have difficulty getting anywhere near a beginner ESOL literacy, an E1 or an E2 class. The imaginative efforts of some practitioners to channel provision mean that they have to work against local and national policies. For this the government and the management of some colleges can be accused of willful neglect. 2. ESOL and citizenship. Shackling ESOL in policy to citizenship has been a shambles from the start. Teachers have done their best to tailor provision to the needs of students within citizenship classes through the development and use of interesting and appropriate materials. Nonetheless, widespread confusion about eligibility for ESOL and citizenship provision, the difficulty students find in getting into appropriate classes, the high stakes nature of the citizenship test, and the absurd nature of its content all clearly affect ESOL practitioners and pedagogy. In classes below E3, which students can follow as an alternative to taking the electronic test, assessments such as Cambridge ESOL Speaking and Listening have themselves also become extremely high stakes tests - something which was never intended or predicted by the exam boards. Citizenship and the 'community cohesion' agenda have led to Government interference in ESOL, and the heavy-handed imposition of an ideologically-laden New Labour version of Britishness, history and citizenship goes against the grain for many. And entirely predictably, given the shifts in policy and the confusion on the ground, students are suffering exploitation and financial difficulty at the hands of sharp operators when they sign up to spurious ESOL citizenship courses. 3. The status of ESOL. Our email discussion looked at this in relation to other areas of ELT, and to EFL in particular. The low status of ESOL is intimately connected to the casualised, part time, gendered conditions of the ESOL workforce itself. The focus on improving and upgrading initial teacher training and CPD which has happened in recent years has not been matched by an improvement in pay and conditions for teachers. I also think that its status as a 'Skill for Life' should be the topic of continued debate. What have been the consequences, academically, pedagogically and professionally, of linking English language learning to the adult basic skills agenda? 4. Funding of ESOL. The key issues are the devolving of funding; the increased involvement of the private sector; and the future of funding post-Skills for Life. There are connections between these areas. The overarching themes as I see them are 1. Funding: How should ESOL be funded? We await the results of the DIUS consultation with interest, though with little hope that an 'ESOL for all' solution will be reached. This will probably come down to a debate about 'Where does the greatest need lie?' Personally, however, I find the idea of 'prioritising groups' for ESOL provision to be odious and intellectually unsound. 2. English in the world: How has the changing role and importance of English in the world at a time of mass movements of people and global communication impacted on ESOL? Most importantly of all is the response of the ESOL community to these issues. Many practitioners wish to resist the role being ascribed to ESOL by the current government, as the debates on this list testify. The question is, how to get and keep a strong voice in public debate? Helen Weir said a few days ago: "What happened to the Save ESOL campaign? I don't think we should be sitting back and letting this happen. It's time for action." Is the Save ESOL campaign moribund? I'd be happy to see it re-ignited, particularly with reference to the first of the points above (provision of ESOL at E1, E2 and beginner ESOL literacy), and to the notion of prioritising. Personally, I see an active and influential role for the UCU here. Cheers James ---------------- Dr James Simpson School of Education University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT UK [log in to unmask] http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff.php?staff=39 +44 (0)113 343 4687 Visit the ESOL Research home page: http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~edujsi/ Join the ESOL-Research discussion list: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html *********************************** 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 http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html A quick guide to using Jiscmail lists can be found at: http://jiscmail.ac.uk/help/using/quickuser.htm To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask] mc type=variable attribute=name source=from> [log in to unmask] Britannia Street *********************************** 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 http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html A quick guide to using Jiscmail lists can be found at: http://jiscmail.ac.uk/help/using/quickuser.htm To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask]