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...