Can you prove EAL progress?

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Can you prove EAL progress?

A school leader told me something recently that has stayed with me. Asked how confident they were that they could evidence EAL progress, they said their school assessed every learner on arrival, but if someone asked how those learners had progressed since, they were not sure they could give a clear answer.

In many international schools, English proficiency is assessed during admissions. UK practice is more variable. Either way, an initial assessment only shows where a learner starts. It tells us nothing about what happens after that point, which is where evidence of EAL progress matters.

• Are they progressing?
• Is the support they’re receiving working 
• Are some language skills developing faster than others?
• Does anything need to change?

When progress isn’t visible, need can become invisible too. That matters before any inspector or governor asks. If a school cannot see whether a learner is progressing, it cannot know confidently whether they are accessing the curriculum or whether the support around them needs to change.

Why proving EAL progress is now a leadership issue

This is both a classroom and a governance problem, and it’s starting to be treated as such.

There’s been a meaningful shift in EAL provision and Ofsted requirements since the launch of Ofsted’s inspection toolkit in November 2025, which includes a dedicated section for pupils in the early stages of learning English as an additional language. It expects teachers to assess pupils’ English proficiency accurately and regularly. More broadly, inspectors consider the progress pupils make from their starting points and whether leaders understand their needs and progress.

For years, the national picture on EAL proficiency has been thin. The Department for Education collected proficiency data in the 2017 and 2018 censuses, then dropped it. Without a reliable national picture, schools need to build and maintain their own.

International schools face a version of the same expectation, sometimes a more explicit one. Schools accredited under the ISI framework for British schools overseas are formally required to assess EAL pupils’ English on entry and report on every pupil’s progress at least annually. That is a binding standard, not guidance. The UAE’s inspection framework asks schools to track English language learners as a distinct group alongside pupils with additional needs, expecting systems that flag when a learner isn’t progressing as expected.

Two very different systems, but the same underlying question: can you show me, not just tell me?

Why English proficiency deserves its own measurement

It would be easy to assume EAL status alone tells you what you need to know but research has established a clear link between English proficiency and academic achievement.

Research from Professor Steve Strand and Dr Alexander Hessel found that proficiency in English statistically accounts for up to 22% of the variation in EAL pupils’ academic achievement. Gender, free school meal status and ethnicity combined typically explain 3 to 4%.  Need sits on a continuum, and where a learner falls on it is one of the better predictors we have of what support will actually help.

That’s the case for specific, ongoing measurement rather than a single point in time. A learner correctly flagged as having an EAL need on day one can still have every decision made about them afterwards resting on a picture nobody has updated since.

What good evidence of EAL progress looks like

Ask yourself four questions the next time someone, perhaps a governor, an inspector or a parent, asks about a multilingual learner in your school:

• Where is this learner now?
• How have they progressed from their starting point?
• Is the support they’re receiving working?
• Can we communicate that clearly to teachers, leaders, governors and parents?

If answering those questions means piecing together spreadsheets, observations and recollections, the evidence has not been built continuously.

Making it work in practice

At FlashAcademy®, we have tried to turn that principle into something practical. Assessment should not be an isolated event. It should connect a learner’s starting point, their language development and what happens next, in a way that teachers and leaders can actually use.

Our proficiency dashboard brings initial benchmarking, ongoing assessment and learning activity into one continuous record, rather than leaving teachers to piece together a series of disconnected snapshots.

At The International School @ ParkCity Hanoi, that continuous picture allowed leaders to establish that 70% of learners had progressed by at least one grade. It was also practical to maintain. Even after doubling assessment frequency, combined staff and student assessment time fell from 424 to 68 hours across the year, an 84% reduction. And when someone asks how a learner or year group is progressing, teachers can retrieve and export the evidence in a couple of clicks.

A confident response to the question

I still think about that school leader’s honesty, not because it was unusual, but because so many others would say the same if we asked plainly.

I want the next school leader I ask to be able to answer differently: “Yes, I can show you where our multilingual learners started, how they’re progressing, where gaps remain and what we’re doing in response.”

Reaching that point means building the evidence term by term, alongside the learner, rather than gathering it in a rush when someone asks. If the picture is kept up to date, leaders can answer honestly and confidently because they already know what the evidence shows.

Every multilingual learner deserves more than a starting point. They deserve a school that keeps paying attention to what happens next.