Best Practice

Supporting the transitions of students with EAL

EAL Transition
How can secondary schools best support the transition of students with English as an additional language into year 7 and between key stages 3 and 4? Sarah Moodie advises

Secondary schools are busy environments all year, but especially in the first weeks of September and October. New students and teachers arrive. Teachers, subject classes, and tutor groups meet.

Parents of learners in year 6, meanwhile, are considering secondary school choices and year 7 teams are welcoming one new cohort while simultaneously preparing open evenings to recruit the next.

At this time, the school’s inclusive ethos needs to be at its most assertive, and the message that learners using English as an additional language (EAL) are welcomed and seen as an asset needs to resonate to all learners, parents, and carers, including prospective ones.

This will help lay the foundations of a positive and mutually beneficial relationship.

It is important to bear in mind that all children experience multiple transitions in their lives, of which moving between schools is one. Crucially, learners using EAL experience an extra, linguistic transition – the shift from learning through a familiar language to learning through English.

Learners who are seeking asylum in the UK have experienced the unwanted transition of being forced to flee their homelands. They may have already experienced education in other countries and/or refugee camps and feel uncertain as to whether this current transition will become permanent.

From a learner’s perspective, what happens during the first half-term at a new school shapes their sense of belonging and inclusion, which in turn will impact their achievement.

Last term I wrote offering advice to secondary schools preparing for the transition of EAL learners. In this article, I would like to consider how we can support new year 7s using EAL, new arrivals into key stages 3 and 4, and existing EAL learners moving from key stage 3 to 4.

I will frame advice and guidance for schools around four key areas of inclusion adapted from the diamond model of inclusion designed by Evans et al (2020).

  • Linguistic inclusion
  • Academic inclusion
  • Social inclusion
  • Teachers’ inclusive attitudes

 

1, Linguistic inclusion

Learners need to feel from the outset that this is a school where they can be themselves and thrive. Seeing and hearing their home languages as part of the fabric of school life sends a welcoming signal. This might be through posters and displays, and through both social and academic discourse in class and in the playground. New plurilingual year 7s can thus be encouraged to feel that they do not have to re-invent themselves to belong.

Late arrivals to key stage 4 might benefit from opportunities to sit GCSEs in their home languages, perhaps an AS or A2 could be available to the right candidates. If work experience is on the horizon, consider whether this can be arranged at a business where the learner’s home language is represented.

Parents and prospective parents also need to be able to visualise their child thriving in a new school. Translated promotional and curriculum material, parent ambassadors from the same linguistic communities, and the opportunity to be involved at forum or governor level are all possibilities to consider.

Guided tours of the school delivered through a community language, from multilingual members of staff or students trained as language ambassadors, can make a huge difference, too.

 

2, Academic inclusion

For new year 7s transferring from primary school, academic inclusion is all about building on the progress in English language acquisition begun at primary school and integrating this into teaching across the curriculum.

If primary schools used the Bell Foundation EAL Assessment Framework for Schools or similar, the EAL co-ordinator should make sure that data is transferred.

Subject teachers need to be aware of the current levels of proficiency in English of their students, and to contribute to on-going assessment as the learners continue to develop proficiency in English through the medium of curriculum learning.

For new arrivals from abroad, a robust, curriculum-based proficiency in English assessment is the best place to start.

Deignan et al (2023) point out the linguistic challenges of the key stage 2 to 3 transition in terms of academic language, particularly polysemic words such as “bar” or “solution”, and complex grammatical structures like the passive voice.

As teachers, it is important to recognise this, seek to amplify the meaning of curriculum vocabulary which may be new, especially those words and phrases which have different meanings in different curriculum areas, and model the required structures needed.

The talk to writing approach (see resources) will help to explore and embed new vocabulary and structures and make explicit the ways in which written English differs from spoken. This will help all learners, including those using EAL.

The Bell Foundation Great Ideas pages are a good place to find inclusive strategies to use in class. If you are new to teaching learners using EAL, consider requesting some relevant CPD.

If you are an early career teacher (ECT), the recent Bell Foundation webinar might be helpful. We have also contributed advice to SecEd’s recent annual ECT supplement, which you can find here.

Any English language interventions for learners at the earliest stages of English language acquisition should have a curriculum focus and aim to re-integrate learners fully into the mainstream as soon as possible. Therefore, collaboration between subject teachers and EAL co-ordinators or other staff running the interventions is key.

For existing EAL learners transitioning to key stage 4, it is necessary to consider the challenges of the upcoming GCSE exams for each learner. Think about the linguistic requirements of your subject. Interventions or extra tuition might focus on interpreting exam questions and the use of suitable academic vocabulary, so if you are not delivering these sessions yourself, consider sharing your subject’s key linguistic requirements with those who are. Access arrangements should be embedded as normal practice.

Key stage 4 late arrivals need bespoke pathways and strong links to post-16 provisions – the key is to consult the learner regarding aspirations and ambitions and jointly construct a map to get there, while also being open to aspirations changing. Again, we have written previously in SecEd about supporting late arrivals who use EAL.

If you are a key stage 4 tutor, new arrivals and their parents may need help to navigate and understand the exams system and the pathways on offer.

 

3, Social inclusion

Learners using EAL and their families need to feel included in the social aspects of school life. Secondary schools are typically large institutions with a multitude of groups and sub-groups – friendship groups, tutor groups, subject teaching sets, sports teams, clubs, orchestras, and many others – each with its own codes and conventions, both official and informal.

Michel Breen, in his paper The social context for language learning, compared the social intricacies of a classroom to coral gardens (Breen, 1985). To extend this metaphor then, the average secondary school would seem as full of wonders, mysteries, and potential dangers to the newcomer as the Great Barrier Reef.

Peer organisations such as Young Interpreters (see further information) can be invaluable in interpreting the unofficial curriculum – the students’ perspective from which teachers are often excluded. They should be particularly high profile and active at this time of year, welcoming new students in a variety of languages, showing prospective families around the school, and epitomising the inclusive ethos.

Finding your place in a new school is an intimidating prospect, especially if it entails a change of language and culture. Hobbies and sports can help – a keen footballer is always welcome at practice, an artist at art club. These can be excellent ways to forge mixed language friendship groups which are not contrived but based on genuine shared interests.

New students using EAL need to know that these opportunities are open to them now, not reserved for some future point in time when they have “learned English”. Producing recruitment posters in a range of languages for any clubs you run, perhaps involving learners in their creation, and using language ambassadors to promote them, can be useful.

In class, building oracy will help both socially and academically. The Bell Foundation has some useful guidance on enhancing classroom talk. Examples of good practice include careful questioning strategies – to probe, clarify and build ideas through talk, and peer activities such as think-pair-share.

Finally, never assume new arrivals and families understand the British school/exam systems. Education is organised differently in many other countries and continents. There is some translated guidance available from the Bell Foundation focused on supporting parental involvement. It is important to actively reach out to parents about welcome events or information evenings, such as key stage 4 options, ensuring that these are as welcoming and inclusive as possible.

 

4, Teachers’ inclusive attitudes

This section of the model created by Evans et al (2020) is arguably the most important, as it underpins the others and is inseparable from the school ethos. Teachers who demonstrate inclusive attitudes do the following:

Avoid deficit model thinking: Especially in relation to those at the earlier stages of acquiring English. High expectations with appropriate language support will result in a positive mindset, can-do attitude, and achievement for the learner.

Embrace multilingualism: Demonstrate respect for and curiosity about the languages of others and encourage this among learners. For example, learn phrases in languages spoken within the school, introduce a language of the week/month and promote translanguaging (see resources). This could be done by creating opportunities for learners to use their repertoire of languages for learning, perhaps by grouping students with a shared language together, or by producing worksheets which have space for bilingual note-taking.

See teaching the language around their subject as an integral part of teaching their subject: As a subject teacher, it is important to understand the double job being undertaken by the student using EAL – acquiring English at the same time as subject knowledge. Research by Strand and Lindorff (2021) shows that learners using EAL can perform extremely well, and that, unsurprisingly, their attainment in UK exams is linked to their proficiency in English. Therefore, building their proficiency in English within your subject lessons, through use of EAL-friendly pedagogy (see resources) is crucial if learners using EAL are to be given the best chance of success.

See the bigger picture: Learners using EAL who are relatively new to English can seem like a big challenge in subject classes. And for late arrivals in key stage 4, exam success might come later, at college. However, the English language, both social and academic, as well as the curriculum content, which they learn in your class is paving the way for this success.

The pastoral teams need to reach out to teachers and educators from other sectors (e.g. primary school, key stage 5 providers) as well as external agencies who may be involved with families in order to build a picture of the learner. This information then needs to be shared with all relevant teachers so the academic and pastoral staff can work together to provide holistic support.

Sarah Moodie is a trainer at The Bell Foundation, a charity working to overcome exclusion through language education. For details, visit www.bell-foundation.org.uk. Read all The Bell Foundation’s articles for SecEd via www.sec-ed.co.uk/authors/the-bell-foundation 

 

Further information & resources

  • Breen: The social context for language learning: A neglected situation, Studies in Second Language Acquisition (7,2), 1985.
  • Deignan, Candarli & Oxley: The Linguistic Challenge of Transition to Secondary School, Routledge, 2023.
  • Evans et al: Language Development and Social Integration of Students with English as an Additional Language, Cambridge Education Research, 2020: https://tinyurl.com/33ec9dfk
  • Strand & Lindorff: English as an additional language, proficiency in English and rate of progression: Pupil, school and LA variation, University of Oxford, The Bell Foundation & Unbound, 2021: https://tinyurl.com/we48f9sh
  • Young Interpreters: https://tinyurl.com/288tedf7

Resources from The Bell Foundation