[eal-bilingual] Funding in Scotland

Thanks Luan,

Just a few more questions if you have the time.  I'm keeping this on the 
public forum because I thought it may be of interest to others but if you'd 
prefer to keep it private just email me direct.

Do all Scottish authorities need to bid to the GAE to get funding for their 
EAL specialists and bilingual support workers?
What criteria or formulae are used to allocate these funds?
On what basis do EAL services such as yours allocate support to schools?
You mention you are encouraging whole school approaches but does that mean 
you are utilising EAL specialists as 'consultants' or are they still 
primarily pupil-contact teachers?
Have you or others in Scotland moved towards Achievement or is EAL still the 
primary focus of specialist support work?

Thanks again
Jonathan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Luan Porter" <luan.porter at hotmail.com>
To: "For practitioners involved in teaching pupils from ethnic and 
linguisticminorities" <eal-bilingual at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 9:06 AM
Subject: RE: [eal-bilingual] Funding in Scotland

HI
yes thats true and there is also GAE (Grant Aided Expenditure) which funds 
our EAL Service in Edinburgh. The ASL Act which only came into force a few 
years ago is a broad piece of legislation covering all children who for 
whatever reason may in the course of their education need additional 
support, for a short or longer term period. Bilingual pupils who require EAL 
support are included in this but the specific funding for EAL Services in 
Scotland is as far as I know not usually taken from this budget. Schools may 
use some of their ASL allocation to meet the needs of such learners but they 
are not required to do so. As you will appreciate they also have a whole 
range of other learners with support needs and they would need to meet their 
needs too, so the ASL provision is largely used for training and Support for 
Learning (inc SEN type staffing) and Support for Pupils Staff (Pastoral).

I'm currently working in Edinburgh (where I'm Head of the EAL Service) to 
try to encourage schools to take a whole school/routine approach to meeting 
the needs of thier BME pupils and including, in an Action Plan, the 
priorities for the focus of EAL support that we put into the school on a 
year by year basis. We have used the HMIe document 'Evaluating Educational 
Provision for Bilingual Learners' to create an audit/self evaluation 
framework for schools to use from which the action plan emerges. We added in 
an extra QI about race equality as the HMIe docs place race equality in a 
separate framework and we wanted to bring them together.

Anyway hope this gives you an idea.
Luan
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