Responces needed for ESOL survey

John Denham, the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has today (4 January 2007) launched a consultation on public funding for English language teaching.

The document seeks views on the role of the voluntary sector in the provision of ESOL (English for speakers of other languages), and employer incentives to contribute to employee's ESOL needs.

The consultation aims to seek views on:

• A new national approach to funding ESOL to help prioritise funding and ensure local areas develop plans which identify the needs of vulnerable people, such as legal residents who might be expected to stay in the country for the foreseeable future, excluded women, particularly those with young children, and refugees who have established their right to remain in the UK
• Suggested new national priorities for ESOL while local areas take responsibility to target funding to best meet the needs of their communities
• The role of the voluntary and community sector in the provision of ESOL
• What incentives should be provided to employers to encourage them to contribute to their employees' ESOL needs.

NUS will be submitting to the consultation and we’d like you, the membership, to input into it as well.

If you’re a union representative or a student at a college which provides/did provide ESOL, your response to the questions below would be very much appreciated.

1. Have individual students come to you to discuss ESOL issues?
2. How are the changes to ESOL affecting students experiences of other courses? E.g. a student is struggling in GCSE maths because they previously intended to take an ESOL course alongside their other studies.
3. Do you know of students who have had to drop out/could not continue on to the next level of their course because of the new costs involved with ESOL (e.g. they completed a level 1 qualification and wanted to do a level 2 qualification in the new academic year but couldn’t afford to).
4. If you are on the college governing body (e.g. you are a student governor), have these changes been discussed at a board meeting and, if so, what was said/what was the general opinion?

Please email your responses to beth.walker@nus.org.uk. Feel free to add any other information, case studies, stories, etc too on ESOL.

Further background on the recent changes to ESOL policy, including information on the new ESOL for Work qualifications, can be found on the following links:

ESOL for Work press notice (October 2007)

Planning and funding information

Race Equality Impact Assessment (REIA)

Deadline for responses is 1 March 2008