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Many of you may have heard about the recent change for Proficiency codes, with DfE no longer requiring schools to make pupils take an EAL assessment and to report on this data. We caught up with Terri Cawser, Assistant Service Lead at Pupil & School Support (Birmingham Local Authority) to ask for her insight into what the new changes meant for schools.
It was announced in June, that there is no longer a requirement for schools to report on the level of proficiency in English of pupils for whom English is not their first language. This was a measure first introduced as a requirement of the school census in 2016 and, at the time, was billed as a way to for the DfE to use data to inform policy on this high needs group; to support schools to distinguish between EAL pupils who lack a basic command of the English language and those who are bilingual; and to allow the DfE to use this data, along with attainment and destination data to measure whether the individual pupils or education settings they attend, face additional educational challenges. It contained criteria on a 5 point scale ranging from A. New to English through B. Early Acquisition, C. Developing Competence, D. Competent and finally E. Fluent.
This criteria also made the answer to the question “how long is a pupil EAL for?” very clear – forever!
The removal of the need to report on the proficiency in English of a pupil should not stop schools and settings from assessing this.
EAL assessment levels require differentiated approaches across key stages to effectively support pupils with EAL in their progression through their educational journey. Research shows there is a greater proportion of EAL pupils with low levels of English proficiency in Key Stage 1 than in later key stages, highlighting the importance of stage-specific assessment strategies. In Key Stage 1 (ages 5-7), EAL assessment focuses on foundational language acquisition alongside early literacy development, where pupils may be simultaneously learning to decode phonics while acquiring basic English vocabulary and sentence structures.
Schools can use pre-key stage standards for pupils working below national curriculum assessments who haven’t completed Key Stage 1 programmes of study, ensuring appropriate assessment for newly arrived EAL learners. Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11) assessment builds on these foundations, focusing on academic language development needed for curriculum access across subjects, with particular attention to reading comprehension and written expression skills required for SATs assessments.
In secondary education, Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14) EAL assessment shifts toward supporting pupils in accessing increasingly complex academic content across multiple subject areas, where language demands become more sophisticated and subject-specific. Key Stage 4 (ages 14-16) assessment focuses on ensuring EAL learners can demonstrate their knowledge effectively in high-stakes GCSE examinations, where research demonstrates a strong positive relationship between English proficiency stages and academic attainment.
What does the national EAL assessment data tell us?
The Bell Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework provides tools for both primary and secondary settings, enabling consistent proficiency tracking that informs targeted support strategies appropriate to each key stage’s specific linguistic and academic demands.
For many schools and settings the introduction of this measure was welcomed. It finally allowed them to clearly demonstrate and celebrate the range of bilingual learners within their setting. It also allowed them to really demonstrate the different levels of EAL support and provision that needed to be in place for different groups of bilingual learners.
There is still a need to understand the progress of bilingual learners within a school or setting. There remains the need to ensure that provision is carefully matched to the needs of all individual learners. There continues to be a need to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding of teachers on how to assess and teach pupils with differing levels of proficiency in English in order to achieve the best outcomes. Just because teachers don’t have to report pupils’ English proficiency anymore, doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be an EAL assessment anymore.
The only real change that the removal of the requirement within the school census should have is the purpose of the EAL assessment.
No longer is the purpose of an EAL assessment linked to the need to report the information. The focus now should return to being what it always should have been – assessment to inform provision and achieve the best outcomes for the children and young people in our schools and settings for whom English is an additional language.
We’d like to thank Terri Cawser for supplying the text for this blog! Terri Cawser is one of the Assistant Service Leads at Pupil and School Support in Birmingham, a team of 40 teachers who support all mainstream maintained, free schools and academies in the local authority. As well as being responsible for service development at PSS she also leads on EAL for the service. Terri has spent her whole teaching career working in inner city Birmingham schools and has seen the changing profile of EAL first hand providing her with the knowledge and experience to support schools in meeting the needs of their EAL pupils.
Interested in all things EAL? Check out our tips on how to set up an effective EAL team! If you are looking for free EAL resources for your school, why not visit our resources page?
