ESOL Funding and Training
There is much confusion about the government’s plans to provide language lessons to immigrants to this country. Where previously a large amount was earmarked for ESOL (English as a Second Language) language classes, funding being given mainly to FE colleges, this funding has been practically totally withdrawn on what seems to be an ad hoc basis. Immigrants are expected to make an effort to learn the language of this country so as to integrate better and function better as members of society. Ironically, immigrants are very rarely in a situation to pay for language classes, so funding has been essential and has been available up until the recent changes in policy. It is a mystery how the language-learning targets now in place will be met if money is less available or indeed is taken away. As a training courses advisory centre, we have many enquiries from both teachers and non-teachers about what they should do to put them in a position to respond to the need they have spotted for teachers for foreign immigrants. For already trained and experienced state school teachers, our advice may be that to make the skills they already have transferable to this new context, they should follow a refresher type course which would bring them up to date with English teaching methodologies and provide them with a toolkit of ideas to make language lessons interesting and worthwhile to learners. These teachers are usually still in their teaching job but may be looking for a change or a way out of the madness that is classroom teaching in schools today. They are short of time, so such a course may be in the form of an online course, which they can fit around their normal daily activities. In the case of people who want to take up teaching English but have no classroom experience, we usually recommend a pre-service TEFL (Teaching English as a foreign language) course, which gives them the basics not only of teaching language, lesson planning and all the nuts and bolts that a 120 hour TEFL course can give them but also of being in front of students in a classroom through observed teaching practice,. Usually would-be teachers in this second group are doing a job of another kind, and need to find a part time, preferably evening course, which will serve the purpose. There are plenty of part time courses available, particularly but not exclusively, in London. It would be useful to have many more available in the bigger cities to cope with the need. It may also be advisable for such courses to focus much more specifically on ESOL teaching rather than pure EFL (English as a foreign language), for two reasons: firstly, an answer needs to be found speedily to the lack of teachers for immigrants in this and secondly because the number of people who can afford to take the time and spend the money heading off abroad to teach English, especially with language school salaries shrinking in real terms as they are, is rapidly diminishing.
