Venue: Galpharm Stadium, Huddersfield

Guest Speakers Include: Phil Bird (Barking & Dagenham College), Mike Harrison (Bromley College) & Caroleen La Pierre (Kirklees College).

* Phil and Mike are ESOL tutors with a keen interest in technology and differentiation. They are currently working on the British Council Nexus project and undertaking the DELTA programme. Caroleen is a Literacy and ESOL specialist.

There will be an exhibition of publishers, examination boards, and books for purchase.

http://www.natecla.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_3325.doc

Article first published 4 November 2011 (Institute of Race Relations)

New figures on the numbers of students enrolling for further education reveal some worrying aspects in the access to education for poorer and BME communities.

Following the controversy over the withdrawal of Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), the The Association of Colleges (http://www.aoc.co.uk/) commissioned a survey of colleges to ascertain whether enrolment was affected in any way. Of the 347 colleges in England, 182 (53 per cent) responded. A complex picture emerges from the survey and some findings are significant.

Half of the colleges saw a drop in students aged 16-19, with forty-six colleges reporting a fall of between 5 to 15 per cent. Those reporting a decline say that the end of EMAs for students in the first year course, competition from other providers, lack of affordable transport and cuts in funding per student were the main factors. A decline in enrolment for Level 1 courses (pre-GCSE and basic skills) was reported by 41 per cent of the respondents.

The true extent of the impact of withdrawal of EMAs is masked because half of all colleges are topping up the reduced government bursary funding from their own budgets and are spending more on subsiding transport for students.

Fiona McMillan, president of the Association of Colleges and principal of Bridgwater College, says that it is particularly the poorest students, with the lowest skill levels, who are not enrolling. According to her, these youngsters are the most vulnerable to loss of financial support with practical barriers, such as the cost of bus fares, being enough to deter applicants.

The Department for Education has criticised the survey for not being robust enough with only half of colleges responding and with the majority showing numbers were steady and over a quarter of colleges reported a rise of between 5 and 10 per cent. It has also defended the more closely targeted £180 million bursary scheme, which replaces the EMA, which will cost £560 million per year.

Although the survey was regional, there needs to be comparison between deprived and prosperous areas. According to the Save EMA campaign, the borough comparisons are stark. In Greater London, five deprived boroughs (Lambeth, Enfield, Haringey, Waltham Forest and Hackney) had 19,541 EMA recipients while more prosperous areas (Richmond-upon-Thames, Chelsea and Kensington) had only 900 recipients. Hence, unless surveys examine enrolment by boroughs with a view to comparing how students across class, race and gender are affected, overall figures either regional or national will not capture the real impact. More research is required along these lines to understand the impact of government policy and funding changes on access to education beyond 16.

In December 2010 we reported (http://www.irr.org.uk/2010/december/ha000017.html) on drastic cuts to funding for the teaching of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), to take effect in September. The cuts would have meant vast numbers of people on income-related benefits being unable to begin or continue English language learning, because they could not afford the fees. But in August, just weeks before the new term, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) issued revised guidance which allows learners who are unemployed, in receipt of state benefits and seeking work, to continue receiving full funding for ESOL courses.

The partial U-turn has been welcomed by campaigners for ESOL, particularly in the light of the equality impact assessment published by the government in July which showed that the funding cuts would disproportionately affect migrant women. It showed that in 2010, over two-thirds of the nearly 200,000 adult ESOL students were women, the vast majority from BME communities, and getting on for half of the women received fee remission because they were in receipt of income-related benefits.

But the Action for ESOL campaign is awaiting clarification from the SFA on whether its concession applies to asylum seekers – who are forbidden from seeking work unless their claim remains outstanding for a year or more. In 2010, asylum seekers made up only around five per cent of ESOL students. And most ESOL providers believe that the concession does not go far enough. In a Commons debate before the summer break, on 19 July, Leicester South MP Jon Ashworth pointed out that many women from migrant backgrounds in his constituency wanted to learn English to help with their children’s education – something which would clearly benefit both the children and the community. But they would still be ineligible for full funding under the revised scheme unless they claim to be seeking work.

According to the impact assessment, three-quarters of ESOL providers were having to scale back the courses on offer because of the prospect of the cuts. Others had devised alternative courses for non-English speakers such as ‘functional skills’ (which includes literacy and numeracy, and is fully funded) to get round the fees problem. The policy U-turn has come so late that it is causing chaos, and ESOL providers have expressed concern that learners will not be aware that they might now be eligible for free study. In some areas, according to the Guardian,[1] teachers have been leafleting local shops, cafes and community centres to try to spread the news. The government, meanwhile, has said nothing.

ESOL campaigners are planning to keep up the pressure to ensure that all those who need to learn English, including asylum seekers and others who are unable to seek work, can do so.

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FOOTNOTE

[1] Janet Murray, ‘ U-turn on Esol funding causes enrolment mayhem for colleges’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/sep/12/esol-funding-government-u-turn), Guardian, 12 September 2011.

The Most Rev Dr John Sentamu, made a special trip to Middlesbrough to celebrate 200 years of Church Schools.

By Jenny Bourne

This special issue of Race Equality Teaching (RET), an equality impact assessment of the Con-Dem government’s educational programme, unpicks exactly what is in store for the nation.

On the one hand is the 2010 white paper entitled The Importance of Teaching and the education bill, on the other hand is Theresa May’s supposed commitment to upholding the principle of equality. Yet, never the twain shall meet. ‘Response to The Importance of Teaching and the Education Bill 2011′ ‘is a concerted effort by a team from [the RET] Editorial Board to put before the Secretary of State and his ministers the evidence that their plans will do little good and, especially for the least advantaged, enormous harm.’

Equality impact assessment?

Robin Richardson shows how the Department of Education has either disregarded or paid a shallow lip-service to matters relating to equality impact assessments. The most obvious disregard was in the cancellation of the building schools for the future programme – which will obviously affect many pupils from BME backgrounds. And he provides a series of points of error or weakness that can, hopefully, be picked up by local authorities and others who are struggling against central government plans.

On raising attainment

David Gilborn tears apart the government’s programmes for meeting its stated purpose of raising attainment for all children and closing the gap between the richest and the poorest. First there are the cuts. And yet there is money to form all those new academy schools. And he provides chapter and verse, stats and graphs to show that academies are unlikely to benefit black pupils achievement-wise and they will actually be at risk to more permanent exclusions. There are higher rates of exclusion for all pupils in academies and, he warns, the right of reinstatement following an appeal against exclusion is due to be removed. Government reforms, he concludes ’seem likely to have considerable negative impacts that will further entrench existing inequalities by social class and race. The extension of academy status carries numerous threats but the most immediate is that a group of schools known to be less diverse and more middle class than the average are set to benefit from enhanced funding at a time when state education budgets are being reduced elsewhere.’

Don’t mention race

Sally Tomlinson is equally scathing. She shows that both the Con-Dem white paper and New Labour’s first white paper in 1997 had similar stated aims and input from the same man, Michael Barber. The differences now are that there will be less focus on targets and micro-management and more structural change, along the lines of academies and free schools (which were of course first introduced in the Blair years). She goes on to highlight the fact that now there is nothing in the current white paper on respect for others and appreciating other cultures and backgrounds. Race and ethnicity, she says, are mentioned minimally in the bill but form an important covert subtext. A major section of the white paper translated into Part 2 of the bill is devoted to discipline and much comment, she writes, is directed at black and other minority students. Teachers already have powers to search for weapons, drugs and stolen goods and new legislation extends those powers and suggests new areas in which teachers should be empowered to check on pupils out of school. Powers of head teachers to exclude disruptive pupils are to be extended and new arrangements put in place for alternative education – ‘in effect an extended sub-system of mainstream schooling’. She envisages private providers entering a market place of free schools for the disruptive and Pupil Referral Units turned academies. The increase in academy schools and free schools will run against any notion of community cohesion by intensifying divisions by faith, class and community.

Free for whom?

Ros Garside argues that the curriculum suggested in the 2010 white paper is elitist and does not indicate any understanding of the process of learning. It ‘harks back to … rote learning and facts that may have no resonance for learners’. Bruce Gill and Feyisa Demie question whether in terms of accountability the white paper has anything much to offer that is new. Rosemary Campbell-Stephens points to the irony that the free schools movement in the UK, though modelled on African American and Hispanic schools in the US, is essentially a white movement. Though the rational might be to tackle inequality, those who have been most disenfranchised in the UK are systematically being excluded from discussions. ‘It appears to be the preserve of well-organised white middle class groups, and certain predominantly Asian communities.’ Berenice Miles, contrasting a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission with government proposals, argues for the need to prevent and respond to racial bullying and the needs of minority children. This means more support for children and schools rather than more top-down sanctions and more exclusions. Children from African, Caribbean, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds will suffer.

Fighting the cuts

Bill Bolloten comments on two of the ‘unkindest cuts of all’ – the removal of financial support for English classes for speakers of other languages (ESOL) and the proposed withdrawal of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) which, though currently worth only between £10 and £30 per week, allows some of the most poor young people aged 16-19 to stay in education. Both of these cuts are politically charged. Forty-three per cent of all those 17-18 year-olds in fulltime education in 2008 received EMA, but this was true of 64 per cent of Black Caribbean and 88 per cent of Bangladeshi students. There is absolutely no doubt that this is a disincentive now for such young people from the poorest families in the most marginalised communities to better themselves. The Save EMA (http://saveema.co.uk/) Campaign and others are mounting a legal challenge on Gove’s decision: two-year contracts with students to receive EMA have been breached by the government.

What an irony. Cameron, in his denunciation of multiculturalism at Munich and recent warning about ‘disjointedness in some nieghbourhoods’, calls on immigrants to speak English and fall in with British values. At the same time an essential public service – funded English classes which can help people fit in by getting access to work and training – is being massively cut. This appears to be in line with the government’s kow-towing to the anti-immigrant, anti-asylum seeker chant of the tabloids. For ESOL will be available to ’settled communities’. No equality impact assessment has been carried out by the government on this policy decision. A campaign to defend ESOL (http://actionforesol.org/), including asylum groups and teachers’ unions has been launched.

This edition of Race Equality Teaching lays out the facts – bare and stark. But in its interstices lie a number of unarticulated issues and unanswered questions. Today, when state provision is being systematically and strategically undermined and chunks of provision handed over to the private sector, the struggles have of necessity to be changed. How can equality be high up on an agenda which is now about private profit? How can racism and structural issues of discrimination be addressed when the political discourse is against multiculturalism and for blaming familial culture for undermining society’s cohesion? How can education’s role in social mobility be maintained when a third of society is, through the market state, to be locked away in the ghettos? At a time of recession and acute cuts, how can one prevent the further marginalisation and penalisation of the poor and powerless in which BME communities are over-represented?

What this issue of Race Equality Teaching (Volume 29 number 2, Spring 2011) reveals is the crying need to campaign now, and all on fronts against the education proposals, before yet another generation of young people is failed and thrown on the scrap heap. And it points up exactly where and how everyone in education – lecturers, teachers, governors, parents, pupils, trade unionists, local authority officials and councillors – can take up the struggle. More, it sketches the range of issues which unites students from asylum-seeker, Gypsy and Traveller, African Caribbean, African, Asian and poor white families. Imagine the strength if all those campaigns got off the ground and came together in a community of interests. That would be community cohesion indeed.

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FOOTNOTE

Race Equality Teaching, ‘Response to The Importance of Teaching and the Education Bill 2011′, (Volume 29 number 2, Spring 2011) can be purchased here (http://www.trentham-books.co.uk/acatalog/Race_Equality_Teaching.html).

HAT News is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

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