EAL Leadership Programme

This programme has been designed in collaboration with The Bell Foundation and is officially approved by The Department for Education. It involves the training of a strategic lead to develop school systems, policy and practice across their whole school community. The intended theory of change is that staff will become better equipped to teach and support their pupils using EAL which leads to better overall outcomes and care.

Suitable for

Any colleague who might be working in a leadership role or similar across KS1-5. For example: an EAL Coordinator, T&L Lead, pastoral lead, inclusion lead, SENDCo, or a class teacher looking to lead on EAL in their school. As this programme will be supporting you to make school-wide changes we would advise that you discuss the programme with your school team first and agree on how it will feed into your wider school priorities and implementation goals.

Regional data

Programme context and overview

Over the last 4 years we have seen an increase in children who are known or believed to be using English as an additional language. It is interesting to note how significant this is in Early Years settings and how we can therefore expect this to move into the subsequent phases and settings over time. As this is the most up to date data from the DfE, we cannot account for those who are not yet “in the system”. We know that over the past 18 months we have also welcomed a large number of children and their families from a range of backgrounds and nationalities who arrive with refugee or asylum seeker status.

As school leaders, we want to do all that we can to support these children when they come to our school communities, but we don’t always have the most up to date evidence base for knowing what to do and how to create the right response to what is needed.

This programme will be delivered by our colleagues at The Bell Foundation who are a highly credible source of support for EAL. We will support and upskill one leader from each school to know more about EAL and learn more about how to enact better policy, practice and systems across a whole school. The programme will run throughout the academic year, with gap tasks, use of a critical friend and a focus on effective implementation.

Programme aims

• Learn how to assess pupils using EAL and feed this into habits linked to data-driven decision making and practice
• Learn more about how to lead on a whole school strategy for EAL linked to the role of an EAL coordinator and developing staff knowledge and practice
• Understanding and embedding practices around how to make English a comprehensible language, especially for new arrivals using EAL and what this can look like in a multilingual school
• Embedding your work done to date on adaptive teaching
• Gain a network of support with colleagues working on similar problems

Programme structure

Dates

Co-Designers of the programme – The Bell Foundation

The Foundation influences policy and practice across the UK by generating and disseminating research; through the robust assessment of projects to identify which techniques have the most impact in supporting learners with EAL; by contributing to the development of public policy; through keynote speaking at national conferences; and through the publication of articles and news stories. As a result of this, and the programmatic activity, over 23,000 education professionals who work with learners who use EAL were trained in 2021 and all schools in England have received best practice articles, and over 8,000 individuals involved in the criminal justice system have been reached.

Main programme designer and facilitator – Caroline Bruce

Caroline Bruce joined The Bell Foundation as a trainer in 2020. She holds an MA as well as a PGCE in secondary education. Caroline taught English in city secondary schools in Nottingham and Liverpool for almost 25 years, and was involved in developing EAL provision for much of that time. Caroline was appointed as an Advanced Practitioner in EAL by Nottingham City’s IDEAL provision, and then as an SLE. She continues to support Nottingham’s EAL provision by co-convening the East Midlands NALDIC RIG. From 2002 until 2004, Caroline volunteered with VSO, helping to develop a sustainable and effective teacher training programme in northern Laos. Caroline is now Training Manager at The Bell Foundation and a significant part of her role is in working with partners to continue scaling the Language for Results programme.

Cost

£275 per person