Consultation

Please note the closing date for the consultation was Friday 4 April 2008.

Setting a National Framework

It is important that we have a locally-driven approach to identifying and meeting ESOL needs to support community cohesion. We want to ensure that priority learners are able to access ESOL provision and so we need to set an overall national framework. We acknowledge that there may be a particular tension in this local/national relationship and that is something that we will want to explore in this consultation.

The overall priority is to focus funding where it will have the greatest impact on community cohesion.  It is important that ESOL funds are prioritised for those individuals and communities where lack of English is likely to contribute to a weakening of community cohesion. Many factors influence community cohesion and by suggesting priority groups we do not imply that those concerned should be held responsible for any local cohesion problems.  We also recognise the difficulties of setting national priorities when the whole point of our strategy is to enable local authorities and communities to identify and respond to local needs.  We have, however, identified an indicative national list of those groups of long term residents who are most likely to suffer significant disadvantage because of their lack of English.  Evidence taken from the Race Equality Impact Assessment findings and the Labour Market Performance of Immigrants in the UK, suggest for example that a high priority group should be excluded women without English as a first language, particularly those from unwaged families who have school age children. There is empirical evidence to suggest that if such parents can develop sufficient language skills they in turn can support the learning of their children, thereby improving their prospects.  The indicative list also includes other groups likely to face significant disadvantage and who may be regarded as hard to reach.

Our indicative national priorities for ESOL would therefore include:

• Legal residents who might reasonably be expected to be in the country for the foreseeable future;
• Excluded women or those who are at risk of being excluded, particularly those who are parents with children under 16 years;
• Parents or carers within families at risk of multiple or complex problems;
• Those who are identified in local areas as raising particular issues for community cohesion; 
• Those having no or low levels of literacy in their own language;
• Those who have not had any secondary education;
• Refugees; and asylum seekers who are still in the country beyond 6 months awaiting a decision on their status or cannot return home.

This list is not in order of priority and would be for use by local partners and the LSC in developing ESOL spending plans.

We welcome views on whether these are the right priorities and how they might best be used to support local planning arrangements for ESOL.

Submitting your response

To submit your responses via the website, you can use the online form. Alternatively, to submit your responses by email, fax or post, you can download a printable version of the form.