EAL

English as an Additional Language

The Ellen Wilkinson School for Girls celebrates its linguistic diversity. Over 55 languages are used by pupils in the school. After English, Arabic is most commonly used.

Nearly 70% of our school population are bilingual.

We define bilingualism as when a pupil uses a language other than English to communicate with others.

The vast majority of our pupils experience the positive effects of bilingualism which aids their English and academic studies. Some are relatively new arrivals to England and are still in the process of learning English.

We use English proficiency levels to define the English achievement of our pupils. These are:

A New to English

B Early Acquisition

C Developing competence

D Competent

E Fluent

Pupils new to English and in the early stages of acquisition of English benefit from additional help in mainstream or study support lessons at least once a day.  We also target pupils in reading intervention during morning registration.

Pupils still developing their competence are given differentiated support to scaffold their literacy as appropriate.

It can take up to seven years to become fluent in English which is challenging for pupils joining the school in keystage 4 or 5. These pupils benefit from study support and additional support in English and Science and some other lessons, including Religious Education, Geography and History lessons as they prepare for external examinations

Language Survey

Each year we conduct a language survey of our Y7s and any other pupils who arrive at EWS. If you would like to complete the survey with your child please do so and return it to:

mhudson@ellenwilkinson.ealing.sch.uk