[eal-bilingual] Ability grouping of newly-arrived EAL pupils basedon mathmatical ability

Hi Paul,

I don't know of any research on this - though it would be possible to
look at GCE outcomes in Maths and English, I guess and come to some
conclusions!

The reason why this seems like sound advice is that maths is the most
symbolically driven area in the curriculum and the same symbols are
generally used throughout the world, so less of a student's ability will
be asked by the medium of assessment.

The question this then raises is why is it justified to put them in a
higher group for English/history/geography just because they are
apparently better at maths than anything else - after al, you probably
wouldn't do that just because they were very good at running.

My first answer would be that ability grouping (=setting) is not good
for anyone and especially not for EAL students who benefit more from
mixed ability groupings that allow teachers to re-group so that the EAL
learner can be scaffolded by variously expert learners, but the wheel
hasn't quite got back to that point yet, so let's consider why maths
might be an indicator of ability in a way that, say, PE might not be.
The essential point for me but would be that it handles abstract
concepts and deals with analysis, pattern spotting and generalisation -
key aspects of language development and for other areas of the content
curriculum. Secondly, maths is often something of a solitary vice,
children tend to get on with it on their own, so you can also get
evidence of their ability to problem-solve and persevere amongst other
things. Given that it does involve reading and writing 'ordinary'
English too and I think the case is made.

Which isn't to say that any apparent ability in any area should be
ignored or regarded as irrelevant - particularly in the case of EAL
learners where our ability to gather meaningful evidence is so
compromised by our inability to get beyond language (especially
English). PE, for example,  allows all sorts of attitudinal
characteristics associated with good language learning - and gited and
talentedness - such as risk-taking, sociability, judging situations,
leadership, etc that might also indicate masked abilities in other
areas. 

Cheers,

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: eal-bilingual-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:eal-bilingual-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Butcher
Paul
Sent: 17 October 2007 13:42
To: For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic
andlinguisticminorities
Subject: [eal-bilingual] Ability grouping of newly-arrived EAL pupils
basedon mathmatical ability

One of our schools was recently given the following advice, which I
think is a good place to start with newly-arrived EAL pupils, but
obviously needs expanding and building upon.

'research had shown that the best way to ability group newly-arrived EAL
students was through their mathematical ability.' 

Would anyone be able to point me in the right direction in terms of any
research that has looked at this?

Thanks

Paul Butcher
Senior Ethnic Minority Achievement Consultant Learning and Standards
Children's Services 

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