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In answer to your questions Leila, from my understanding of the situation, the LAs will not be funding adult ESOL directly. Funding will still come from the LSC (soon to be the SFA). The LAs' role in this is to collate information about who the priority groups are. They may draw this information from a number of places including local FE colleges and they should start to work on this in earnest before the end of the year so that planning can be in place for 2010 - 2011. At an event hosted by NIACE, delegates were told that if Colleges failed to address priority groups 'financial levers' would be applied. This means that where Colleges may be targeting 16-18 NEETS, Leitch Targets of E3 numeracy or L1 Literacy etc and this doesn't meet local ESOL needs, colleges will feel the financial effects of this from the LSC/SFA. Colleges and other providers will thus be 'prompted' to meet the local need. I have had some brief communications with our local authority who assure me that the matter is in hand and an invitation to share information will be extended to our college soon. How this will take place depends on the lessons learnt from the pathfinder authorities of which there are a number. With regards to learner movement across borders, while I am not sure of the detail, I understand that LAs will work together to see what sort of travel to learn patterns exist so learners may access the most appropriate provision rather than that based solely on arbitrary borough boundaries. I hope this helps, and if anyone has more accurate information or a deeper understanding of it, I hope they will not hesitate to correct any of the details stated here. Ziya Moustafa Head of School ESOL & Community Learning Enfield College From: ESOL-Research discussion forum and message board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Laila El-metoui Sent: 17 July 2009 23:38 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Cuts to ESOL and New Approach Dear all, I am not sure how we could convey the facts below to the government and how we can get the message across that ESOL is needed for the social and economical well being of the United Kingdom. Also this new approach raises some questions in my mind if anyone has any answers please let us know. * our waiting list for pre-entry ESOL learners was in the region of 70 at the end of this academic year at Southwark College (South London) we only offer 2 classes next year which are already getting full and we are creating a new waiting list which will no doubt be very long (yet again). * ESOL learners 'hard to reach' first port of call for ESOL is their local FE college * increased fee reduces the number of students enrolling and denies those on low income the right to be educated (some husbands will not pay for their wife to be educated either because they can't afford it or do not see the point of paying for their education) * single parents find it increasingly harder to get childcare which hinders their ability to access education * the administrative burden (i.e. filling in paperwork, writting letters, etc) of undeducated parents often falls on their children, which in turns impacts on their own schooling * if children are burdened by their parents to deal with what should be dealt with by them, they don't do as well as school, drop out and get in to trouble (if anyone has stats on that it would be very useful) - there could be a direct link between NEETS and lack of ESOL provision .. deserves to be investigated if not already done. * the government ought to have a more holistic approach to funding education in the sense that educating parents indirectly educates their children Questions * is there a risk that LAs will only fund residents in their borough and refuse to pay for residents who do not live in that borough? * will students who live on the border of one borough but go to college close to their homes in another borough, have to travel further in order to access education? * will the LAs enter in to a partnership with their local FE college (the experts) or will they go the cheapest provider so that they can meet their social inclusion targets to the detriment of the quality of the provision? I'd be interested to have your thoughts. Thank you Laila El-Metoui Adult ESOL CM Southwark College Chair Natecla North Thames _____ Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:56:25 +0100 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Cuts to ESOL and New Approach To: [log in to unmask] Thanks to James and Karen for this article. Good to see the cuts and redundancies at THC getting attention in the national press. I could not agree more with Perdita's comments. However, at the NATECLA conference at the weekend I must say I did detect a certain degree of buy-in to the New Approach from ESOL practitioners along the lines that local authorities will be able to more easily identify the supposedly 'hard to reach' ESOL learners who seem not to be accessing the provision at local colleges. John Mackie (BIS) and the people from the ESOL community who are advising him seemed to suggest that the LAs will be able to do this by using their extensive networks and influence through e.g. health authorities, GP surgeries, primary schools etc and so on. However, I believe that the supposed 'hard to reach' ESOL learner is actually an invented category which serves as an excuse for their policy which is to fragment ESOL and take it out of the FE colleges where all the ESOL expertise lies. The colleges know who the people are who are not accessing classes; they are the students who were turned away when lower level provision was cut because of the LSC ruling that 80% of all provision had to be qualification bearing. Let me imagine a scenario, though, in which the new policy is in place, and try to imagine how it might work. Lets say a GP or primary school teacher or social worker identitfies a person who does not speak much English at all and is not accessing ESOL provision. Lets say this is a Bangladeshi woman in Tower Hamlets in London (or Leeds, or Bristol or wherever). What does the GP, or teacher do? Maybe she phones the council's special ESOL 'hard to reach' hotline, or contacts the special ESOL 'hard to reach' worker and says 'Mrs X is isolated and doesn't speak English and isn't accessing ESOL'. So then what happens? the council goes round to her house to find out why? with a Sylheti/Bengali interpreter? or does she get 'intercepted' at the GP surgery or her kid's school? Lets say she manages to explain why she isn't going to ESOL class - apart from the possibility that her class at college closed, she might have one or more of a myriad of reasons: childcare, gender arrangements, ill health, disability, lack of confidence. But all are likely to need long-lasting, sustained, (so probably expensive) solutions - solutions which only well-resourced, well-funded colleges are likely to hope to meet (and even then we know that even in the halcyon days of full funding there was never enough). But lets say the woman says 'OK I'll go to ESOL, what a good idea, that will end my isolation and I will also cohere much better in my community'. Off she goes along to her local college and guess what, no Entry 1, it was cut because too many people weren't progressing fast enough. So she goes to her local community centre but they have only one class a week for two hours on the day she has to take her child to the clinic. Or she takes the place and after a year has made no progress because the teacher is an unqualified volunteer and 2 hours a week is not enough to learn anything. Disheartened, Mrs X feels she cannot learn English and gives up. Of course what is more likely to happen, and this is at best, is that the GPs, social workers and community workers etc will say 'we think there are a lot of Bangladeshi women in this area who don't access provision', therefore once again invoking the notion of 'group' which the Approach says it wants to avoid. The colleges already know about these groups and individuals, but, as we said before, have already cut their provision because of 80/20 and have in fact made some of their good teachers redundant and many of their learners 'hard to reach'. ESOL provision, then, will move to the workplace, for those lucky enough to have an enlightened employer (lots of those around for entry level students) or will be carried out in the community by volunteers on the cheap while highly qualified teachers look for work. Further education RIP. If anyone see a different way the New Approach can ever work, please let the list know... ____________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________ Melanie Cooke Researcher Department of Education and Professional Studies King's College, London Franklin Wilkins Building Waterloo Road London SE1 9NH Tel: 020 7848 3122 [log in to unmask] http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/education/staff/mcooke.html _____ From: ESOL-Research discussion forum and message board [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Simpson [[log in to unmask]] Sent: 17 July 2009 13:32 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Cuts to ESOL and New Approach Hello all Karen Dudley has drawn my attention to an article in this week's Guardian about cuts to ESOL in colleges. (Thanks Karen). The link is: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/14/beginners-language-courses- cuts-english> http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/14/beginners-language-courses-c uts-english I'll just quote briefly from the article. I particularly like the quote from Perdita Patterson at Tower Hamlets (my favourite part is in bold). For me it articulates really well one of the main problems with the New Approach to ESOL: "The government has already suggested that local authorities should have a stronger role in improving English for non-native speakers. Perhaps mosques and charities will also step up to the task. "Perdita Patterson, an Esol teacher at Tower Hamlets College, says she "doesn't know where to begin in response to this argument". "It is beyond me to understand how a miscellaneous collection of private providers, charities and religious organisations could possibly replace an established mainstream educational institution with decades of specialist expertise, relationships all over the borough, and the ability to identify barriers to learning - from dyslexia to domestic abuse. There is simply no case to be made," she says." The New Approach to ESOL requires local councils, authorities and other bodies to reinvent the wheel regarding ESOL provision for 'hard to reach groups'. The implications of the policy are beginning to crystalise. Cheers! James Dr James Simpson School of Education University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT United Kingdom +44 (0)113 343 4687 <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask] http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff.php?staff=39 *********************************** ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. 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