[eal-bilingual] CVA and EAL pupils

This is a huge question and although I don't really have answers, here are some thoughts. I hope other people can add in their experiences trying to do this at school level and help us all! 

  I think EAL is itself part of the context in the Dfes VA calculations and is actually a factor that improves the school context! I don't know of any formula for working out expected rates of progress or VA for EAL learners, essentially you can only do this if you have a valid base line assessment.  I raised this issue with the Dfes a few years ago and never got an adequate answer. I think they said they'd 'look into it' [did they? ]

  If there is no previous KS data, you can allocate a notional points score for each core subject [e.g. at KS3 the magic number is 15 and I think it's the same for KS2] level 5 is 33 points  which in turn predicts a grade C/D for GCSE. Once you have a base line you need to use what ever RAISE online now produce instead of the old PAT/PANDA [I haven't used this myself]

  In my own [secondary ] school I have used the QCA steps and NC sub levels to work out expected progress. [see a recent discussion thread ] This means that level 1 threshold and level 1 secure are equivalent to a sub level. This works out more or less OK for literate/educated EAL learners, but is not much use for those who have no previous education/mother tongue literacy whose progress is more variable.

  My school assumes that a pupil should be able to progress 6 sub levels over KS3. So a literate EAL learner who starts in year 7 on Level 1 threshold, should be expected to achieve 3b by the end of year 9. But [ and this is a big one!] a lot of EAL learners make more progress than their monolingual peers once fluency is established and any targets [ or evaluation of CVA] has to take this into account. Last year I had a boy with level 3 s in KS3 SATs who got 1 A, 3 Cs and 4 Ds at GCSE. No formula could have predicted this.  Students frequently exceed their targets, particularly in non core subjects.   

  I think the important thing is starting a dialogue with other teachers, or HODs about starting points and progress, and just have a few case studies where good value has been added.

  There is a really useful book published by Birmingham or maybe another Midlands authority that has graphs of expected rates of progress for EAL learners starting school at different stages, assuming the 5-7 years to achieve full academic fluency. I'll post the reference if I can find it at work tomorrow. 

  I found this link from Google, could it be what you read? 
  http://www.emaonline.org.uk/ema/client_files/resources_uploaded/395_July2007EMAOnlineNewsletter.pdf

  Catharine 
  helen tucker <hart0999 at hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi

Can anyone help with calculations of CVA for EAL pupils? I saw something a few days ago on the web - didn't bookmark the page, and now can't find it again!

Is there a formula that I can use. I'm confused!!

Thanks in advance

Helen
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