EAL Assessment Framework for Schools wins British Council Award
An assessment tool to help teachers gauge the English language proficiency of bilingual pupils has won the prestigious British Council ELTons Award for innovation.
The EAL Assessment Framework for Schools is the first empirically derived framework for assessing this group of pupils in England. It was developed by a team including Dr Michael Evans and Dr Yongcan Liu of the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Prof. Constant Leung at King's College, London and Dr Neil Jones, Consultant. The framework was commissioned by The Bell Foundation, whose mission is to overcome social exclusion through language education. The team won the category of Local Innovation in English Language Teaching at a ceremony in London on 18 June.
The Department for Education (DfE) now requires all schools to include details of the English language proficiency of pupils with English an additional language (EAL) as part of school census data. The new framework is designed to support teachers in meeting the requirement, providing detailed descriptors they can use for both summative and formative assessment.
At its core are two sets of EAL assessment descriptors (one set for primary and one set for secondary), a progress tracking planner, and a suite of supporting strategies. The Framework is made available free of charge to all schools, local authorities and professional organisations in England and free for download to support teaching, planning and monitoring in schools.