Getting it right for overseas pupils from the start, Helen Wood

Getting it right for overseas pupils from the start Helen Wood considers the EAL student experience in independent boarding schools

In September 2019, approximately 12,650 new overseas pupils will take up places at independent schools in the UK. Although many of these students will have parents for whom English is not their mother tongue, the children themselves may consider English as their ‘first’ language. This is particularly the case where they have been pursuing their education through the medium of English at a British international school prior to their move to the UK.

This does not mean that joining their new school in Britain will necessarily be any easier for these students. Even those with considerable experience of using English in a mainstream educational context can face immense challenges on a linguistic, cultural and emotional level. So, how can schools appropriately frame their admissions policy, curriculum design and pastoral infrastructures for these international pupils to allow them to flourish? And, equally importantly for home and international pupils alike, how can schools ensure a sense of community cohesion, whilst at the same time becoming more diverse?

According to Struan Hellier, Head of Boarding at Woodbridge School in Suffolk, these are questions that require vision on the part of senior leaders. ‘We need to be clear why we want overseas pupils. Finances are of course important, but… if we see overseas pupils as a means to an end, inevitably, that is exactly how they will feel.’ For Hellier, this has a strong moral dimension which begins with determining whether the fit is genuinely right for both school and the child wishing to join it. ‘I have seen pupils with almost no English brought into exam classes, for example. With the best will in the world, unless a school is very specifically set up to cater for such students, the chances of effective integration, either academically or socially, are very limited.’

Dr Hilary Laver, Director of Admissions at Cheltenham Ladies College agrees, stressing that ‘the closer an overseas applicant joins to exam years, the more critical it is they have the language skills to get them off to a good start.’ In order to ensure that their applicants will thrive, Laver gathers information on

prior schooling, home language and whether the student selfidentifies as native speaker, bi-lingual or tri-lingual etc. For Year 9 entry or above, non-native English speaking applicants who have been in an international educational environment for less than two years are set an online screening test, Password Pupil, to ascertain whether their level of academic linguistic proficiency is sufficiently close to C1 on the CEFR (6.5 IELTS) to pass on to the next stage of the admissions process. This avoids the heartache of applicants unnecessarily being set hours of formal entrance exams only to be turned down for a place.

Laver is right to be cautious, particularly in a selective school setting. While we lack data specific to independent schools, the attainment profile of EAL pupils starting in the state sector reveals that it takes longer than three years to reach full proficiency, even in an immersive setting. So, despite much heralded DfE figures in January 2018 showing EAL pupils out-performing native speakers in the EBacc, the detail behind the headlines was more nuanced. Analysis by the Education Policy Institute exposed huge differences between the higher proficiency EAL student achievement and their less linguistically able peers, with pupils arriving in Years 8, 9, 10 scoring an average of 4 (or D) and those arriving in Year 11 an average of just below 3 (or E). The report’s author, Jo Hutchinson, highlighted that there was a significant problem of ‘misleading data’ caused by baseline academic assessments being undertaken before a child attained linguistic proficiency, meaning that schools were consistently underestimating potential academic attainment of EAL learners to an unmeasured degree. Further research by Oxford University, published last October, supported the finding that

proficiency in English was the most significant factor in the variability in EAL pupil attainment. Professor Steven Strand and his co-authors urged schools to record the proficiency in English of their EAL pupils using standardised measures, such as the PIE Scale, and to target support appropriately. Such research must raise questions about the ‘value added’ claims of schools in the independent sector, too, particularly for those schools which have significant international cohorts and are not using appropriate tools to measure EAL learner proficiency.

Overall, then, evidence points to a need for better assessment and benchmarking of EAL proficiency as the starting point for accurate data on attainment. It also suggests that either screening students at the admissions stage, or building an early review of EAL learner proficiency into the school calendar, are essential to an effective EAL strategy. Hilary Laver adds that admissions staff should communicate with the EAL specialists, who review EAL learner attainment soon after entry, via suitable literacy assessments, to check that new pupils have the skills to fulfil their potential and, if not, to adjust the language support strategies accordingly.

One tactic adopted by some selective schools who pre-screen applicants is the use of Teaching Partnership Agreements, such as those available with Bishopstrow College, which prepares international pupils for entry into leading boarding schools. These agreements also allow the destination school to issue the prospective pupil a Tier 4 CAS covering a short-term preparation course. Alternatively, schools interviewing pupils as far as two years ahead of admission can suggest a longer preparation course for entry to prep school, senior school or sixth form (with a separate CAS). Either approach helps new

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About Password Tests Password Pupil tests are ‘gold standard’ assessments in Maths and English used by independent schools for international pupil recruitment and admissions purposes. Password results can be relied upon for assessing entry to secondary education, GCSE, A level and IB programmes or utilised for pupil placement on arrival. They are: • designed by experts and aligned to international standards • rigorous, accurate and highly reliable • secure and simply managed online • time-efficient, eliminating paper based processes Password tests are controlled by our partner schools’ own staff and delivered by the school, their trusted representatives, or the British Council, wherever and whenever required.

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international pupils hugely, according to Diana Cree, Director of External Relations at Lancing College, who underlines how vital, ‘having a good standard of English is for any pupil joining us.’ In addition to dedicated academic language tuition, however, these courses introduce concepts like the House system, and also teach unfamiliar team sports such as netball and rugby. ‘Our relationships with specialist providers means that when international pupils arrive with us they are better equipped for their studies and able to integrate more easily into the full UK Boarding experience,’ concludes Cree.

Those independent schools best able to provide for lower proficiency EAL pupils work very hard to ensure that their school/pupil ‘fit’ is right by tailoring curricular and co-curricular delivery in-house. King’s Ely, for example, identifies these EAL learners through its entrance test procedures and early re-assessment on arrival. It has international programmes at Junior and Senior school level, whereby those requiring additional support are taught separately but integrated with their British peers through boarding and co-curricular activities. This, according to Matthew Norbury, Academic Director of International Programmes, ‘allows weaker EAL pupils to rapidly acquire language skills across the curriculum whilst at the same time building cross-cultural friendships, including with local students, through mutual areas of interest like sport or music.’

This integrative element is key for EAL learners and their British peers alike, and Struan Hellier speaks passionately of the immense opportunity it affords all concerned. But he also flags the on-going commitment required to encourage integration, involving whole families, teachers, support staff and pupils, through rites of passage, buddy systems, the range of extra-curricular

Pupils offerings, as well as practical support with bank accounts and medical registration. ‘The school which simply puts on a threeday induction course and considers the job done is failing its new pupils’, he says. Research from the university sector on the positive impact a strong sense of ‘belonging’ has on academic outcomes and well-being suggests that Hellier’s emphasis on developing a genuine sense of shared community is an important one.

Such insights should make us think long and hard about how assessment and induction is conducted, with whom, and over what period support is required for both EAL and UK pupils to sustain progress in language proficiency and levels of integration. The lack of consistency in these areas across the independent sector also points to the need for CPD specifically targeted at marketing, admissions, pastoral and teaching staff that will better equip them to deal with the issues that having an increasingly international student boarding community leads to. Above all, perhaps, what senior leaders need to take on board is that the best measurements of success of the EAL/international strategies they adopt will include both the academic outcomes and the quality of relationships within their diverse student bodies. After all, surely successful and happy independent school alumni of all backgrounds will be our greatest advocates.

Dr Helen Wood is Head of School Partnerships at Password

Testing, having been Head of the International Section at d’Overbroeck’s School in Oxford for 10 years and their wholeschool Head of EAL for 18 years. She is a former Deputy Chair of BAISIS, the British Association of Independent Schools with International Students, and was a member of the Accreditation Scheme Advisory Committee of the British Council.