EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / in One Short Paragraph Please Describe This Project and What It Has

COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2010

2010 APPLICATION FORMPlease refer to the ‘2010 Guidance for Applicants’ before completing this application form. The deadline for submission of entries is 5pm on 2 October 2009. Submission arrangements are detailed at the end of this application form.

The application form is split over five sections to reflect the assessment criteria, and to facilitate the leeting process. It is up to you to decide the content and length of each section, but your application must not exceed three pages in total (excluding the cover pages). CATEGORY TITLEAdvancing community and citizen well beingProject Name ASL/EAL Service: supporting children and young people with English as an Additional Language (EAL)Lead Organisation Glasgow City Council, Education Services Department/ Team ASL/EAL ServiceParticipant or Partner Names Maureen McKenna, DirectorBrenda Wallace, Area Manager (North) and ASLLes McLean, Quality Improvement Officer in Equalities and EALMaria Walker, ASL/EAL CoordinatorAward coordinator Tracey CunninghamContact details [email protected] 0141 287 3625Can we publish an anonymised version of this application form on our website?YES EXECUTIVE In one short paragraph please describe this project and what it has achieved. SUMMARY We will use this in any future publicity material. Glasgow City Council’s ASL/EAL Service aims to meet the needs of children and young people with English as an Additional Language in Glasgow. The service was restructured in August 2008 in order to better meet the needs of all children with EAL and in relation to the statutory requirements under the Additional Support for Learning Act (2004) to assess and address the barriers to children’s learning. The restructuring would ensure more children and young people with EAL were able to access specialist support and to ensure the service was responsive to changing demographics and the changing challenges faced by educational establishments. There has been a programme to build capacity of both mainstream and specialist staff in order to improve the support children get within education establishments. · a clear rationale, defined processes and focus on stakeholder needs PLANNING · contributes to organisation’s goals, community plan and SOA, and national policy context Since 2000 there have been significant and ongoing changes in both the number and diversity of children who have English as an Additional Language (EAL) in educational establishments in Glasgow. Approximately 7000 children had EAL in 2000 with most of these children being from an Asian or Chinese background. More detailed data has been collected since 2006: Number of children and young % of total number of children Year people with EAL and young people 2007 9454 12%

2008 9800 15% 2009 10784 17% (Data taken from Seemis – Education’s management information system)

While the majority of these children and young people have been born in the UK, a significant and growing number are made up of asylum seekers, refugees and foreign national (mainly migrant workers) children. In total over 110 languages are used by children and young people in Glasgow.

Glasgow City Council employs 140 specialist EAL staff to support children with EAL at an annual cost of £5.1 million. Between 1996 and 2008, the location of these staff had not changed and was targeted at historical migration patterns by predominately Chinese and Asian families. By June 2007, approximately 2700 (30%) of children and young people with EAL were in establishments that had no specialist provision.

The ASL/EAL Service helps promote Glasgow City Council’s Key Objective ‘increasing access to lifelong learning’ the Education Services’ Aims, Vision and Values, particularly “supporting our most vulnerable children” and “celebrating diversity and reducing inequalities”. This project not only supports achievement towards National Outcome 4 ‘Our young people are successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens’ but will enable us to achieve the Local Outcome in our Single Outcome Agreement of ‘Improve educational attainment and achievement for all young people’. There are 13 indicators attached to this outcome including increased national attainment levels in primary school in reading, writing and mathematics. In addition, Education Services contributes to the capacity building of the community through providing support to parents and through the celebration and recognition of the value of diversity and the richness this brings to every child’s educational experience.

The aims of restructuring were:  A higher percentage of children and young people with EAL would have access to specialist support within their establishment.  A policy on supporting children with EAL would be developed in the context of the Additional Support for Learning Act.  Capacity building with specialist and non specialist school staff to ensure that all staff would have the knowledge and skills they needed to support children and young people with EAL. Children and young people with EAL would have their needs better met which would lead to improvements in attainment and achievement.

COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2010 P a g e | 1 · implemented in all relevant areas and across all the required stakeholders DELIVERING · carried out in a structured and logical way , using robust and sustainable methods A working group produced draft proposals in September 2007. The working group included head teachers, trade unions and senior officers. Bailie Gordon Matheson, the then Executive Member for Education and Social Renewal, was fully involved in the process and presented a report on the final proposals to the council’s Executive Committee.

A consultation document “Working Towards a new Additional Support for Learning/English as an Additional language service in Glasgow”, along with a draft policy document, were launched for consultation. The consultation ran until December 2007. A total of 155 responses were received. These came from a wide range of respondents including schools, staff, parent councils, pupil councils, trade unions and external stakeholders. 18 presentations were made to staff in schools, parent councils and external stakeholders. Interpreters were used where appropriate. A full analysis of responses was produced. A revised strategy was developed, taking full account of the responses to the consultation.

The new ASL/EAL Service was established in August 2008. Establishments used a national five point scale to evaluate children’s language levels and this information was used to deploy staff to establishments on the basis of need.. The approach is formula driven and is open and transparent. No other authority in Scotland has developed such a system. Approximately 28% of staff had to change school. This exercise was completed with support from Education Services Human Resources and with full involvement of teacher trade unions.

A new ASL/EAL Response Team was established to provide support for schools that have experienced a significant increase in mid session enrolments of children and young people with EAL.

A clear new structure for the service has been established and widely publicised including identifying a range of key contacts for advice, support and guidance.

A significant amount of training has been delivered since August 2008:  5 seminars for the 140 FTE EAL staff on Additional Support for Learning legislation and Glasgow’s new ASL policy. 6 more sessions are planned for 2009-10, as part of a two year commitment.  Sessions for 72 senior managers on how to manage EAL staff within their establishment.  Sessions on Assessing English Language Levels for 180 senior managers and other staff from 138 establishments. Data on English Language Levels is collected annually in the School Census carried out by the Scottish Government and is also used by Education Services as one of the measures of need on which staff deployment is based. Accurate data collection is therefore very important.  Training specifically aimed at school office staff and pupil support assistants. These sessions were piloted in two Learning Communities and have now been mainstreamed into the Training and Development catalogue and are available to staff from all Glasgow establishments. These two groups are particularly important because they will often be the first point of contact that new children and families have with educational establishments.

IMPROVING + · evidence of leading practice and innovation being achieved EVALUATING · appropriate measurement and learning, and how this has led to continuous improvement One of the features of this group of children and young people is a high degree of turnover i.e. where children only stay in a school for less than a year before moving away only to be replaced by a new set of children with little or no English. Schools with a high degree of turnover have additional challenges that schools with the same number of children but a more stable population do not have. To support these schools, we have built a factor for turnover into our mechanism for allocation of resources. This was used for the first time in August 2009. Schools welcomed this refinement.

Senior staff moderate teachers’ assessment of children’s language levels through sampling. During 2008-09, they met with a small number of children to assess whether the levels they had been allocated were accurate. The purpose of the exercise was to ensure that levels were being applied consistently across the authority and to identify any training needs. This small exercise identified a number of issues which will be addressed this session. Sampling takes place each year and leads to improvements in teachers’ assessment of language levels.

Following research by ASL/EAL Service into the performance of young people with EAL in English language SQA examinations, an ESOL Strategy working group was established to develop a strategy that would offer, support and guidance for staff and ensure consistency of approach across the authority. In addition a number of

COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2010 P a g e | 2 secondary schools were beginning to present young people with EAL for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) qualifications. ESOL qualifications are offered by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and can be used as an alternative to traditional English qualifications. Some young people are being denied access to Higher education as they do not have an appropriate English language qualification and their English is not good enough to achieve a Higher English. This strategy being developed has been discussed with partners from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education, the Scottish Government, Learning and Teaching Scotland and the SQA and will be launched early in 2010. The strategy will lead to more young people with EAL achieving better qualifications.

In response to feedback from teachers, the sessions this year will focus on the wider aspects of ASL such as motivation, promoting positive behaviour and neuro-developmental disorders. We are also planning a partners day when other services and agencies who work with children and young people with EAL will showcase their projects. There will also be an awareness raising session on child trafficking. This is an area that is particularly important for staff who are working with children who have arrived from outwith the UK. RESULTS + · a convincing mix of customer perception and internal performance measures · clear line of sight to the delivery of the Single Outcome Agreement IMPACT · a full range of relevant results showing improvement over time More children and young people with EAL now have access to specialist EAL support within their establishment. More educational establishments now have specialist EAL support in house.

School No. of establishments No of children with % of children with session with EAL staff EAL with access to EAL with access EAL EAL support support 2006-07 67 6754 70% 2007-08 99 8331 85% 2008-09 102 9226 85.5% Glasgow’s policy document “Supporting Children and Young People with English as an Additional Language” was approved by the Executive Committee of the council in June 2008. It has now been widely distributed within edu cation and is available on the Glasgow City Council website. There is evidence of improvements in attainment at 5-14 since the new ASL/EAL Service was established. The f ollowing table compares the Glasgow average scores at 5-14 for primary and secondary schools with the averag e for primary and secondary schools with EAL staff: Reading Writing Mathematics 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9 Prim Glasgow 81.5 82.3 83.6 74.7 76.1 77.1 85.3 86.7 86.9 Average Prim EAL 79.2 81.4 81.4 73.2 74.4 75.9 83 84.5 85.3 Average Difference 2.3 0.9 2.2 1.5 1.7 1.2 2.3 2.2 1.6

Sec Glasgow 57.7 62.3 68.3 50.6 53.8 57.8 58.6 60.3 62.6 Average Sec EAL 54.6 60.9 67.1 49.2 53.1 57.6 56.6 59.7 62.6 Average Difference 3.1 1.4 1.2 1.4 0.7 0.2 0 0.6 0

This table demonstrates that attainment at 5-14 levels in Glasgow is increasing. In schools with EAL staff, attainment is below the Glasgow average. However, in these schools attainment is also increasing, and increasing at a higher rate than the Glasgow average. This shows that restructuring the ASL/EAL service has had an impact by reducing the gap in attainment levels between the Glasgow average and the average for schools with EAL staff.

COSLA EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2010 P a g e | 3 THE COSLA CHAIR’S AWARD This category is awarded at the discretion of the Chair and is open to submissions under any of the seven categories. It is awarded to those submissions of exceptional standards or merit demonstrating achievements above the limits stipulated in the assessment/judging criteria for the relevant category. Alternatively, submissions can be considered which can demonstrate being conducted in exceptional circumstances. Do you wish your submission to be considered for the Chair’s Award? YES In about 300 words, please highlight the reasons why this submission should be considered for the Chair’s Award:

Local authorities all over Scotland are facing challenges supporting increasing numbers of children and young people with EAL. However the challenges facing Glasgow City Council are greater than other authorities. We have by far the biggest numbers (Glasgow has 8624 children whose main home language is not English, next nearest are Edinburgh with 3996 and Aberdeen City with 1811 – School Census, Scottish Government 2008) and are the most linguistically diverse (Glasgow has 110 languages, next nearest are Edinburgh with 90 and Aberdeen City with 78.) Glasgow City Council is the only local authority in Scotland that has a contract with the UK Border Agency to provide accommodation for asylum seekers and we have the highest number of refugee families. We have a large community of Eastern European Roma families. These factors all make meeting the needs of children and young people with EAL much more challenging for us.

At the same time as numbers and needs are increasing, financial constraints mean that there can be no increase in resources. We have therefore had to be innovative in how we deliver services, ensuring we build capacity within all staff in order to better meet the needs of children and young people with EAL. We have succeeded in doing this, while at the same time securing year-on-year improvements in attainment levels in the city.

Next steps Have you answered the assessment criteria set out in the guidance? Is your application form 3 pages or less? (anything more, including appendices, will be automatically rejected) Has your application form been authorised by an appropriate person? Have you indicated whether you wish the application form to be published? Submitting your application Please email your application by 2 October to: Category 1 [email protected] Category 2 submissions [email protected] Category 3 [email protected] Category 4 [email protected] Category 5 submissions [email protected] Category 6 [email protected] Category 7 [email protected] Queries surrounding the submission of applications can be made to: Adam Stewart ([email protected] / 0131 474 9275)