EMTAS Moodle

By Deputy Team Leader Claire Barker

Horse washing in the River Eden at Appleby Fair. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This blog explores the importance of horse fair season, which runs from May until October. It suggests ways to bring aspects of Traveller culture into the school curriculum and highlights opportunities to celebrate Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month (GRTHM). 

British rural life has featured local markets for centuries, originating as farmers’ markets where livestock was bought and sold. In the past, horses were central to agriculture, transport and trade and were considered valuable assets. Over time, some of these farmers’ markets became meeting places for people from the Romany and Traveller communities to meet and trade horses.

Today, the fairs still exist as commercial and cultural gatherings where Traveller families meet, news is exchanged, wares are sold and horses are traded. Here, we take a closer look at three well-known horse fairs.

Appleby (Cumbria)

Appleby Horse Fair first began in 1775 and is thought to be one of the oldest markets still being held annually. It started as a livestock market mainly for sheep, cattle and horses and was held outside the town boundary.  Unlike other horse fairs, Appleby continues by long term tradition and customs unlike some of the other fairs that were granted a Royal Charter giving them Royal assent to hold the fair.

Due to changes in both agricultural practices and transport, especially the coming of the railway, farmers moved their trade to  elsewhere in the county but around the same time the Romany and Traveller communities took over Appleby Fair as a gathering point in their annual calendar and it became a specialist horse fair. By the 20^th century, Appleby was established as the main horse fair event of the year for Romany Gypsies and Travellers.  This fair has always been held in early June when many Travellers traditionally were on the move and grazing was at its optimum, making it a good time for horse trading. These days, it is the largest Romany Gypsy and Traveller gathering in Europe.

Appleby reinforces identity and cultural ties for Romany and Traveller communities, its significance to them being far greater than the market and horse-trading opportunities it offers.

Stow Horse Fair (Gloucestershire)

There are two Stow Horse Fairs, one on the Thursday nearest 12 May and one on the Thursday closest to 24 October. These two fairs traditionally open and close the horse fair season. 

In 1476, King Edward IV granted a Royal Charter for two five-day fairs a year. Over time, this pattern has evolved into two one-day fairs. Families usually travel up the day before and pack up the day after. This fair was originally a sheep fair as this was the main industry of the Cotswolds. As the pastoral economy changed with the agricultural revolution in mid-17^th to late 19^th centuries, so did the fair and its main focus became horses. Over the years, the horse fair has become a traditional Romany and Traveller horse fair where families meet to socialise, trade horses and hold a market.

Wickham Horse Fair (Hampshire)

This fair is held on 20 May every year unless it falls on a Sunday when it will be held on 21 May.

This fair originated in medieval times around 800 years ago. Like the other fairs, it started as an agricultural fair reflecting the local economy. Henry III granted a charter for a weekly market to be held in the village square and over the years, it has become an annual market and event for Romany Gypsies and Travellers.

Today it includes a mixture of cart driving and racing, fun fair rides and stalls as well as horse trading.

The fair takes over the village square and adjacent road where the racing and showing of horses take place.  The street market sells all sorts of goods from furnishings and horse equipment to clothing and china. The village square hosts funfair rides and catering stalls, adding to the lively atmosphere.

The fact that the horse fairs continue to take place and to thrive denotes the continuity of heritage and visibility of Traveller cultures. The fairs have evolved from being an economic necessity to an enduring cultural heritage.

Implications for schools

Where families are working at the fairs, for example trading, running stalls, fairground rides or catering, pupil absence may be recorded using the ‘T’ code.

It is good practice for schools in areas with Traveller communities to acknowledge the fairs and to embrace the experiences of their Traveller pupils by encouraging them to take pictures, bring them into school and talk about what they have been doing whilst absent. Teachers can consider creative ways to include aspects of Traveller cultures into their teaching eg looking at area and the setting up of a fairground in Maths, or exploring  evolutions in transport and industries in Humanities. Taking time to discuss different cultures and heritages enables pupils to feel confident and proud of their roots and creates a sense of belonging in their educational setting.

June is Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month (GRTHM). The organisation ‘Friends, Families and Travellers’ have announced their theme for this year, ‘Onwards with Hope’. They are running a competition for schools to create a collage showing what hope means, how we can continue to foster hope and what we want the future to look like.  Hampshire EMTAS encourages all of our schools to participate in this competition and send in photographs of your collages.  Why not ask your Traveller children to discuss their experiences at the horse fairs and their views of how this might continue in the 21^st century?  An interesting project to bring all the heritages and cultures of the school together.

By EMTAS Team Leader Dr Sarah Coles

The CAML Key Stage 2 ‘shapes in boxes’ task materials

It is widely accepted that learning English as an additional language is not a special educational need in and of itself. That said, there will be a proportion of multilingual learners in any school who have both sets of needs. Sometimes, this is clear-cut – for example where there is a diagnosis already in place. In such cases, practitioners can be more confident that their multilingual learner does indeed have SEN and they can work to support both those needs and the child’s EAL needs. However, in other cases, the root cause of a child’s lack of progress with their learning may not be so apparent.

For monolingual, English-only children, SENDCos will be familiar with a range of assessment tools and approaches they can use to help identify the nature of the child’s SEND. But for our multilingual learners, many of those tools are not appropriate due to linguistic and/or cultural differences that render them unreliable. So what exists for our multilingual learners that doesn’t leave them out in the cold?

The EMTAS Specialist Teacher Advisor team has recently been trained to use ELT Well’s ‘Cognitive Assessments for Multilingual Learners’ resource, which we shall henceforth shorten to ‘CAML’. CAML comprises a set of tasks which are designed to be free of linguistic and cultural biases. Alongside background information about the child and tracking of their progress over time in acquiring English as an additional language, the CAML tasks can be used to help build a cognitive profile of multilingual learners and determine what interventions might be useful.

The tasks cover such aspects as the development of literacy practices, auditory and visual memory, speed of processing and phonological awareness. They are simple to deliver though EMTAS teachers have found that to do the whole suite in one sitting might be overwhelming and better engagement can be achieved by doing them over two or more sessions.

Each task comprises a short practice, to familiarise the child with what they need to do. Once they are ready, they progress to the full task, many of which are timed. Outcomes are in the most part quantifiable and in the CAML materials, there is guidance to interpret a child’s performance. For example, in one of the memory tasks, ‘shapes in boxes’, the child is briefly shown a shape placed in a grid. The task is for them to choose the right shape from a selection and put it on a grid, replicating what they saw. The task gets progressively more challenging as the child is next shown two shapes, then three, and the guidance includes the number of shapes a child of that age might reasonably be expected to get right. There are several tasks that focus on each area, so results can be cross-checked, enabling practitioners to have more confidence in any conclusions they may draw from the exercise.

So far, our findings from using the CAML with children in schools have highlighted both strengths and areas of weakness. Whilst the CAML is not intended to be a diagnostic tool, we hope that our findings will result in more multilingual children receiving support that is appropriate to their particular needs, both EAL and SEN.

If you have concerns about a multilingual child’s progress, the first thing to do is read the guidance on the EMTAS website: Steps to take when concerned about progress of EAL pupils | Education and learning | Hampshire County Council. If having done that you’re still not sure you’ve nailed it, contact EMTAS@hants.gov.uk to discuss how we might work with you to establish if the underlying cause of concerns about a child at your school are to do with EAL or SEND – or a bit of both.

Further reading: EAL & SEND | EMTASMoodle

By EMTAS Specialist Teacher Advisor Lynne Chinnery

Teaching today sometimes feels like conducting an orchestra while the instruments keep multiplying. One moment you're guiding learning in the classroom, the next you're trying to catch up on all the other tasks you have to do.  

The central problem is not a lack of commitment or professionalism, it's time: government surveys of teachers’ working lives (Department for Education, 2023–2025) consistently highlight workload and long working hours as major challenges for teachers in England.  

Because we work closely with teachers on a regular basis, we at EMTAS understand that finding the time to read through theories and strategies can be difficult at the end of a long day, no matter how concise we try to make our posts and aides-memoire. With this in mind, we decided to create some bite-sized videos to see if this might be a more accessible way of sharing relevant information and guidance on teaching and supporting learners of EAL.

We are pleased to share that the first set of this new series of bite-sized training videos is now available on the EMTAS Moodle. These videos form part of a wider project to overhaul our free Guidance Library, making it easier for school staff to access information quickly, build skills in manageable steps and revisit key guidance whenever needed.

Three main sections of the Guidance Library have already been updated:

·         Supporting New Arrivals

·         Use of First and Other Languages

·         EAL and SEND

The videos cover a range of practical themes designed to support everyday work with pupils and families, and can be accessed at any time. More topics will be added over the coming months.

We hope these quick and accessible resources, none of which lasts more than 5 minutes, make it easier to fit professional learning into a busy day. Videos can be shared during staff briefings, used for in-house CPD, woven into induction for new staff or, watched individually when you've managed to steal a few minutes to yourself.

Explore our new bitesize videos in the Guidance Library. We would love to hear your feedback and any suggestions about areas of support for learners of EAL and Travellers that you would like to explore next. Feel free to email us here: EMTAS@hants.gov.uk.

Designed by Hampshire EMTAS, the EAL Excellence Award is a comprehensive self-evaluation framework that helps schools monitor the impact of their provision for pupils learning English as an additional language (EAL) and address wider aspects of minority ethnic achievement. Covering five key areas - Leadership and Management, Pedagogy and Practice, Data, Assessment and Progress, Teaching and Learning and Parental and Community Engagement - the award originally featured three levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. 

However, as schools continued to use the framework to drive sustained improvement, a need emerged for a fourth level to recognise excellence consistently demonstrated at Gold across multiple validations. This blog explores the journey of the award through Merton Infant School’s own experience, offering insights into what sustained excellence looks like in practice.

Merton Infant School's EAL lead Mrs Relf and the Young Interpreters celebrate their Diamond Award

How did the Merton Infant School’s EAL journey start? 

Merton Infant School’s journey began over a decade ago, when EAL was identified as a whole-school priority due to the increasing number of multilingual children joining the school. From the outset, the school worked closely with EMTAS, seeking advice on meeting the needs of multilingual learners, arranging whole-staff training and introducing the Young Interpreter Scheme.

In 2019, the school undertook its first award validation and achieved Bronze. Their EAL journey continued under the leadership of their EAL Co-ordinator, who ensured staff training remained current and provision was consistently maintained across the school. Acting on guidance from their initial validation, the school progressed to Gold in 2021. When they successfully renewed their Gold award in 2023, Headteacher Mrs James posed an important question: “What’s next for us?”

And so, the Diamond Award was born.

What is the EMTAS Diamond EAL Excellence Award and how do schools achieve it?

Working with Merton and other Hampshire schools that had reached similar milestones in their EAL journeys, EMTAS developed the Diamond level to acknowledge schools that not only maintain Gold standards but also act as centres of expertise, extending their impact into the wider community.

To qualify for Diamond, schools must achieve Gold across two consecutive validations and provide evidence of work in at least one of the following strands:

Community - engaging with families across the wider catchment
Collaboration - working in partnership with other schools
Contribution - supporting EMTAS initiatives and developments.

The Diamond Award was launched in 2024: Working beyond Gold – introducing the new EMTAS Diamond EAL Excellence Award.

How did Merton Infant School achieve Diamond?

In 2025, led by their new EAL Co-ordinator, Mrs Relf , Merton Infant School became the first school in Hampshire to achieve the Diamond EAL Excellence Award. To meet the Diamond criteria, Mrs Relf provided evidence in not one but two strands: Collaboration and Contribution. She mentored EAL Co-ordinators in other schools on their own EAL award journeys and worked with EMTAS to help shape the Diamond Award itself, as well as contributing to new content for the Young Interpreter Scheme.

The school also demonstrated that Gold standards had been consistently maintained since their previous validation. A key focus was consolidating the Leadership and Management strand by further embedding EAL into school policies and aligning it with the school’s core values: Motivation, Excellence, Respect, Teamwork, Opportunities and Never Give Up. The Pedagogy and Practice and Teaching and Learning strands remained strong, with EAL embraced by all staff. In addition, much work had focused on the Parental Engagement strand.

In response to parent voice gathered through EAL coffee events and annual questionnaires, families expressed a desire to play a more active role in sharing their cultures with the school. This led to the creation of Culture Day, with multilingual parents and staff invited to lead activities in school. The response was overwhelmingly positive, strengthening partnerships with families, many of whom have already volunteered to take part again next year.

Merton Infant School has been using a ‘Language of the Half Term’ approach since 2016. When Mrs Relf took on the role of EAL Co-ordinator, she refined and adapted the initiative to strengthen its impact. Children are now recognised as language experts and are invited to lead whole-school assemblies, allowing their peers to hear authentic pronunciation directly from one another. This peer-led approach promotes confidence, respect and inclusion.

Parents are actively involved, with families invited to check the accuracy and pronunciation of multilingual words, helping to ensure cultural and linguistic authenticity. Where possible, parents are also invited to attend launch assemblies to share their first-hand knowledge of the language. These contributions are warmly acknowledged and reinforce the school’s belief that families’ languages and cultures are valued and respected.

To support cognitive load, the amount of language taught has been carefully reduced, reflecting the principle that less is more. Previous languages are regularly revisited when new ones are introduced to support children’s long-term memory. As a result, by the end of the Summer term last year, pupils were able to confidently greet others in six different languages and identify where each language is spoken around the world.

To further reinforce the connection between spoken and written language, children are encouraged to write labels and captions in their own language so they can see their language represented in print. This was also set as a whole-school homework challenge, with many children taking part. Their work was proudly displayed across the school to celebrate linguistic knowledge and family involvement.

Following a suggestion from the EAL governor, key areas of the school environment are also labelled using the Language of the Half Term to enable children to see and engage with the language in meaningful contexts across the school. This inclusive approach is now part of everyday practice and extends into whole-school events such as productions, where children are encouraged to showcase the school’s linguistic diversity. When sharing messages such as Merry Christmas, Happy Diwali or thank you, children speak first in their own language. These small but meaningful moments send a powerful message of respect and belonging to children and families alike.

How did achieving Diamond impact the school as a whole? 

Merton’s successful validation coincided with changes to the Ofsted framework, which now includes reference to early-stage learners of English as an additional language (page 20). In a twist of fate, Ofsted inspectors visited Merton Infant School on the very same day as their Diamond validation.

Inspectors were impressed by the school’s strong EAL leadership and parental engagement. During the inspection, Mrs Relf met with the inspector and spoke passionately about the school’s commitment to its multilingual families, from the moment registration forms are completed through to families becoming a valued part of the Merton community. The school’s culture is built on the belief that if provision is right for SEND and EAL families, it is right for everyone. Creating a welcoming environment where children and families feel a strong sense of belonging and are supported to thrive is central to this ethos.

This was evidenced through systematic book monitoring, questionnaires, governor monitoring visits, curriculum monitoring reports and parent feedback. Most powerful of all, however, was the pupil voice. Inspectors commended the children’s passion and maturity as they spoke confidently about their school and their experiences within it.

In their November 2025 report, Ofsted inspectors wrote:

What does it mean to have achieved Diamond level?

Achieving Diamond level officially recognises Merton Infant School as a centre of EAL expertise. This status goes beyond internal excellence - it positions the school as a leader in supporting others.

In the Autumn term 2025, EMTAS called upon Mrs James and Mrs Relf to co-deliver an online network meeting focused on the changes to EAL in the new Ofsted framework. Practitioners from across Hampshire working in different phases learned from Merton’s experience of the updated framework and how they successfully embedded EAL into whole-school practice. Colleagues came away feeling inspired by Merton’s work including the ‘Language of the Half Term’ idea, which other schools have since started to adapt for their own settings.

Coming soon, schools embarking on their Young Interpreter journey across the UK (and beyond) will be able to hear from Mrs Relf’s perspective of running the scheme at Merton Infant School in brand new video material uploaded to our Moodle. Practitioners will also hear from Merton’s Young Interpreters themselves!

What’s next for Merton Infant School?

Both Mrs James and Mrs Relf have reflected that achieving the Diamond Award is not an end in itself. EAL remains a core principle woven through everyday practice, one that is embraced by the whole school community. Work is continuing to maintain high standards, keep up with current approaches such as the Talk Rich Teaching Toolkit and support colleagues across the Hampshire EAL network.

Looking ahead, the Merton team is extending its expertise to Merton Pre-school, where a bespoke version of the EAL Excellence Award will shape provision for multilingual children under four years of age. We look forward to hearing how EAL continues to develop in the Merton community.
 
With thanks to Mrs James, Mrs Relf, staff, parents and children at Merton Infant School.
 

This blog is about a collaboration between Olha, an EMTAS Bilingual ELSA (B-ELSA) and Hannah, one of two school-based ELSAs at Fairview School. Working together, they provided emotional literacy support to Yehor, a child from Ukraine, when he was in Year 2 and again when he was in Year 3. In January 2025, EMTAS Team Leader Sarah Coles visited the school with Olha to talk to Yehor about his experience of that support.

Children from Ukraine in Hampshire schools

Most of Hampshire’s Ukrainian children came to the UK under the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme following Russia’s full-scale invasion of their homeland in February 2022. As we’ve got to know them, we’ve learned they are linguists, mathematicians, musicians, physicists, dancers, artists, gymnasts, chess players and poets. And they are children who’ve been impacted by war, bringing with them experiences the like of which no child should have to endure. Some have had direct experience of the bombing raids, losing people, pets, homes and possessions that way; others have relatives and friends in the worst-affected regions of Ukraine and know about the impacts of the war through the experiences of those people; many continue to live apart from their male relatives who have stayed behind and are involved in the fighting, leading for some to further loss of loved ones as the war drags on. In short, it is not difficult to understand that some of our Ukrainian children may have a need for extra support as they learn to live with grief, separation and losses big and small - these experiences on top of the stress of getting used to living in a new country and a new language. Hence the creation of the B-ELSA role, one way in which Hampshire has responded to the support needs of children from Ukraine.

The B-ELSA role

EMTAS Ukrainian and Russian-speaking Bilingual Assistants have been ELSA-trained by Hampshire Educational Psychology (HEP) and they continue to receive the same supervision from HEP as school-based ELSAs. They are deployed to partner up with school ELSAs to plan and deliver ELSA sessions to children from Ukraine. Because of this collaborative approach, the child can access their ELSA sessions using any or all of their languages. While the B-ELSA moves from school to school throughout the working week, the school ELSA stays put. This ensures that the child has someone they can go to who understands their situation and is there for them all the time; they don’t have to wait for the next B-ELSA visit to get support. What the B-ELSA brings to the sessions is two-fold, both language and culture. Thus the B-ELSA can be a link with home for the child, bridging gaps between home and school in ways in which their school-based colleague cannot.  

The school

Fairview School in south-west Hampshire is a one form entry primary school with around 240 children on roll. Most of the children are English-speaking and numbers of learners for whom English is an Additional Language are low at around 5%. The arrival of children from Ukraine has been a learning curve for everyone at Fairview, but people have been open to taking on this challenge and responding in ways that nurture a sense of belonging; the Ukrainian children are seen as bona fide members of this school’s community.

Meet Yehor 

After the initial shock of joining the school in Year R, his first experience of being in an all-English environment, Yehor seems to settle in well. He tells me he is the youngest of three children and he talks about his dad, Stefan, and an uncle and aunt; these are the people in his family unit. Yehor likes Minecraft and stories. He plays football and he is partial to a custard cream. He doesn’t seem like a child who’s heard bombs falling on his home city, Kiev, or sat for hours in bomb shelters, waiting for the all-clear.

Yehor’s mother died when he was a baby so Stefan is parenting on his own alongside holding down a full-time job. The older siblings help out, collecting Yehor from school. Yehor says they sometimes call him the baby of the family; he doesn’t much like this.

Stefan is keen that his children maintain their language and culture and so when Yehor gets home, there is Ukrainian school work to be done too. Yehor is proud to be Ukrainian and keen to do well. He says

At Fairview, all is well until Year 2. By this time, Yehor is 7 and he’s been here two years. His English is developing well and he is able to access the learning, and is especially keen on maths. However, he begins to demonstrate some behaviours that tell staff he needs a different kind of support. When things don’t go his way, Yehor throws or breaks things, bangs his head on the table or retreats under it. If another child has something he wants, Yehor snatches it. If they get in his way, he roughly pushes them aside.

It is the school’s Head and Deputy who first suggest trying B-ELSA support, having heard about it at a district Head Teachers’ meeting. The school SENDCo agrees; she understands that these new behaviours might be Yehor’s attempt to communicate that he is struggling to navigate the bumpy terrain of living two very different lives, each with its own set of demands and expectations. One he lives at school in English and the other at home in Ukrainian – two different languages, two different cultures; small wonder he’s experiencing difficulties finding his way aged just 7 and with no route map to help him.

The B-ELSA-supported sessions 

EMTAS B-ELSA Olha is the person in this story whose job it is to help Yehor build his own bridge so that he can navigate life in two languages and manage the emotional side of that experience. In her B-ELSA role, Olha says she sees herself as a facilitator, letting the school-based ELSA lead the sessions, ready to step in if a child seems hesitant, or if she sees there’s been a misunderstanding. School-based ELSA Hannah’s job is to provide continuity and to be the person who is there for Yehor every day, noticing when he’s coped well with a tricky situation and offering him an encouraging word, and feeding her day-to-day observations of him into session planning.   

The two aims of Yehor’s B-ELSA-supported sessions are 1) to work on Yehor’s social skills and 2) to help him understand and name his own emotions – a vital step towards managing them for himself in more positive ways. In line with best practice for this way of working, at the start of each of Olha’s visits, and before Yehor joins them, Hannah briefs Olha on what’s been going on for Yehor between times. At the end, when Yehor’s gone back to class, they spend another few minutes reflecting on how the session went and planning for the next one.

After the second series of sessions in the autumn term of Yehor’s Year 3, the situation is much improved. Yehor is able to use lots of new words to talk about emotions – his own and those of others. He can identify when he is feeling angry and he describes ‘hot chocolate breathing’ as a strategy he’s learned in his B-ELSA-supported sessions and uses to calm himself down.

Yehor says the best part of his B-ELSA supported sessions has been the stories; he’s loved having Olha read to him in Ukrainian at the end. This has for Yehor been an affirmation of his Ukrainian identify, a link with his home language and his home country. It’s also been an opportunity for him to explore a new role, that of interpreter; he tells Hannah in English what the story’s about as they go, and he’s become really good at it, both Hannah and Olha affirm. Thus his sense of his own identity has been boosted and he has learned to accept praise where he’s achieved success, here as a young interpreter.

When asked if he’d recommend B-ELSA-supported sessions to other children from Ukraine, Yehor says “definitely,” adding that the sessions “…helped me a lot…to talk about how I’m feeling.” Now, when asked about school in England, Yehor tells me, “whole entire class is my friends.” He goes on, “I have to do everything correctly, listen, be good, be kind,” and he knows some ways to show those behaviours now, thanks to the sessions he’s had. And so we leave Yehor, a happy, settled, talkative boy who is now able to more fully enjoy the experience of growing up in more than one language.

___________________________________________________
For more information about children here as refugees, for free resources and for specific information about accessing B-ELSA support for a child from Ukraine, see the EMTAS Moodle Course: Asylum Seeker & Refugee Support.
 

In Diary of an EAL Mum, Eva Molea shares the ups and downs of her experience of bringing up her daughter, Alice, in the UK. In this instalment, Eva attempts to prepare Alice for her Italian Heritage Language GCSE.

I know it is a cliché but: where does the time go??? It’s been one and a half years since my last chapter, and I apologise for starving you, my affectionate readers.

So, let’s see what happened since I last told you about my adventures navigating the education system in the UK.

After sending the GCSE options form to the school, we had to wait for what felt like an infinite time before Alice’s choices were confirmed at the end of Year 9: Spanish, History and Dance. And a very happy child in da house!

Year 10 started in the best possible way: fewer subjects that Alice didn’t enjoy, and many of her besties in her classes. What could go wrong?

Well, it turned out that now Alice would have traded her “non-negotiable” Spanish for Drama, had we allowed that, and that Dance was not as simple as it had been presented at the GCSE Options Evening. On top of that, there was the Italian Heritage Language GCSE looming over her, and the even more horrifying prospect of being prepared for it by her very own MAMMA…

Every year, since Year 7, I had asked the school to let Alice take her Italian GCSE in Year 10 and, worn out by my requests, the head of MFL, who had also been Alice’s Spanish teacher in KS3, had agreed to that, being confident in Alice’s skills in Italian and knowing that, given my role as a bilingual assistant for EMTAS, I would be able to prepare her for the exam. Now all I had to do was to have regular weekly sessions with my darling child to get her as ready as she could be.

I decided to leave it for September, so that Alice could find her feet in Year 10, and then started planning our sessions for the quiet Sunday afternoons, when we would have plenty of time to go through all the papers. Or so I thought.

Session 1: Sunday 5^th of October 2023, 3 pm, Reading paper, Higher Tier. Puffing like a steam train, Alice read the paper, answered all the questions, and left. Net working time: 40 minutes. Net upset time: the whole afternoon. When I told her that she had done really well with her first practice, my angel looked at me and spoke these words: “Mum, I am a native speaker, I told you it would be easy”. And that was it.

Session 2 was booked only in my diary; the other ones didn’t even make it there. I was completely defeated by my daughter’s silent dismissal. Despite my attempts, she found a whole lot of more interesting things to do rather than practise for her exam: meeting with her friends, reading a book, having to wash her Rapunzel hair, crosswords. Even homework! Really?? Her writing paper gathering dust on her desk, untouched… until a month before the speaking test, when I started to vocalise my anxiety about it.

Eventually, in the attempt to quieten me, the poor thing accepted to sit down and complete at least one listening and one reading past papers, as well as her writing one, and to practise the speaking test with me. And this is when we both learnt something.

Alice learnt that being a native speaker was not sufficient to pass the test with full marks because, despite her fluency in Italian and her very rich vocabulary, she was lacking exam technique. Alice was rather taken aback when, listening to the recording of her speaking test practice, she realised that she didn’t sound as fluent and confident as she thought she was. This epiphany shook her to the point that she willingly made room in her busy schedule for some Italian practice.

The lesson for me was that teenagers don’t want to learn with their parents. Let’s repeat it all together: TEENAGERS DON’T WANT TO LEARN WITH THEIR PARENTS!

It doesn’t matter if their parents are world experts in a given subject, children don’t want to learn with them, nor from them. I don’t know whether this is part of the generational conflict, or not wanting to be confronted with parents’ (high, in our case) expectations, but teenagers learn better with others rather than their parents. I know this might not be true for all children, but it certainly is for mine. And I should have known that because, even though my husband has taught Maths at college and Uni, Alice refuses categorically to be supported by Dad and so we have a Maths tutor.

The other challenge was that the Exam Officer at school asked me to find someone who could act as examiner for the Speaking Test, because the school didn’t have any members of staff who could do it, and obviously I couldn’t either because I was “known” to the student. Now, where we live, Italians are thin on the ground and finding a native speaker wasn’t so easy. Fortunately, one of my husband’s colleagues came to the rescue.

In the end, Alice passed her Italian GCSE with flying colours and got her so wished – read agonised – for 9, although she was very disappointed to have dropped some marks. If only she had gone through the vocabulary list I had printed out for her…

“All’s well that ends well” someone said, but do all families of students with EAL have a good experience with their Heritage Language GCSEs?

At the end of July, at a party, I happened to talk to two mums with EAL, whose girls (the same age as Alice) have also taken their Heritage Language GCSE in Year 10 in a maintained school. Two completely different experiences from ours.

Like Alice, one of these girls has both parents with EAL and first language is spoken at home all the time, therefore she is a very fluent and confident speaker. On the other hand, having lived here most of her life and having been educated in the UK, her reading and writing skills in first language are not as good as her listening and speaking ones. Unfortunately, parents were not provided with guidance or practice papers, and were left to figure it out for themselves.

The other girl has one parent with EAL and an English one, which means that English is the means of communication at home. The mum decided not to even attempt to prepare her daughter for the exam, and found a tutor that would help with that. The girl attended her sessions with the tutor, and worked harder than she would have with her mum (have I already said that teenagers don’t want to learn with their parents?). In this case as well, had it not been for the tutor, parents would have lacked the resources to support their child adequately.

The benefits of taking heritage language GCSE for students with EAL is invaluable, especially if they have not been long in the UK or if they are finding learning a bit challenging. Not only does it break the ice with taking exams in a different education system, but usually its good result boosts their confidence and self-esteem, as well as gives them a sense of pride in their heritage and community and opens doors to future job opportunities. It could also benefit the school’s end of key stage averages.

So, what could schools do to support students with EAL and make the whole experience easier?

A common mistake is to assume that when first language is spoken at home, children with EAL are also literate in their language. This is true in the many cases where parents have found pockets of time and encouraged their children to read and write in first language and fostered relationships with other speakers of said language. But parents’ evaluation can be a bit iffy, and I can unashamedly say that parents of children with EAL are biased when evaluating their children’s first language skills (if our children are not fluent and literate in our first language, we feel like we are not doing our job well, and we are not honouring our heritages, and we are depriving our children of the opportunity of being “perfectly” bilingual, and…and… shame on us!).

Once established that the student is capable, and willing (there is no point in forcing students if they are not ready to commit – Alice didn’t have a choice, though), to take the Heritage Language GCSE, a member of the MFL Department could have an in-person meeting with the student and their parents/carers to explain what the exam entails, its grading for the different tiers, and provide as many past papers as possible (schools are best placed to access the latest resources from the examination boards’ websites).

Another thing to consider is that KS4 students have very busy schedules, and sometimes they can fall behind with additional work, so having an adult in school – a member of the MFL Department, who could also help with teaching exam technique, their tutor, their head of year – that checks in with them regularly and monitors that they are completing their practice papers could really help them stay on track. Liaising with the parents/carers would also be a great way to remind them to use first language at home all the time, especially in the run up to the exams, as well as allowing the students to do some practice papers in school, perhaps during tutor time, or looking for opportunities to group together students that speak the same language so that they can practise their speaking skills.

This year GCSE season is fast approaching, my usually delightful daughter has already turned into a prickly porcupine, and I have studied the exams timetable to figure out when it will all be over and serenity will reign over our house again. At the moment, it seems a very distant fantasy.

All I can say for now is: one down, ten to go!


Further information

More information about Heritage Language GCSEs and EMTAS support packages can be found on our website. The deadline for requests is the 1^st of March.

By former EMTAS Specialist Teacher Advisor Jess Richards

It’s one thing to be an advisor helping other people welcome new arrivals. It’s quite another when your family become the new arrivals themselves.

At the start of 2024 my husband and I relocated to Texas with our two children. To be absolutely clear, we are in a privileged position. We weren’t escaping conflict or instability, we had the support of a big corporate employer and – most significantly of all – we didn’t have a language barrier to overcome. Nonetheless, moving several thousand miles with kids has been a real education for this so-called ‘specialist’.

I am pleased to say I have seen a lot of excellent practice. My daughter arrived in Kindergarten in the middle of the school year and was literally welcomed with open arms. Teachers stood outside on her first day with signs like an airport arrivals lounge to make sure she knew where to go. They were visibly excited to meet her and make her part of the school community. We received lots of information about aspects that were completely new to us: riding the bus or joining the car lines for school pick up, buying school supplies. Despite the frequency of accepting new students from overseas it hadn’t dampened their enthusiasm. Not once did our arrival feel like an added burden in their busy schedules. School spirit and belonging wasn’t just theoretical; they were living it out every day.

There’s an infographic sometimes used in EMTAS training with concentric circles showing the concerns of newly arrived students. The outside circle is the least complex, applying to any child at a new school without the added burdens of language acquisition or forced displacement. This is the circle where my family sits. Will I make friends? Will I know where to find the toilet? Will they have food I like? These are easy to solve but often overlooked. I have a new appreciation for them now. When you’re operating in a totally different education system, the little things really matter.

What did my children find most challenging? Ironically, my six year-old daughter says it’s the language. She’s a first language English speaker in a first language English setting and yet she’s still navigating linguistic differences every day. We tried to prepare her for the obvious: restrooms, recess, trash. Others she learned by inference or plain old misunderstanding: band aids, tennis shoes, braids. Luckily she isn’t alone in a big expat community and she’s socially confident. A shy child might have found it quite tough.

The linguistic challenges for my three year-old son have been much more stark. Still early in his own English language journey, he had less context to help him piece things together. We talked about the ‘bathroom’ and the ‘restroom’ and his ‘pants’ but didn’t realise how frequently he would be asked, ‘do you need to go potty?’ Once he worked out it was ‘potty’ not ‘party’ (accents are tricky when you’re three!) he still thought it wasn’t for ’big boys’ like him. He assured them in no uncertain terms that he uses the toilet.

Our move has also taught me a lot about an aspect we sometimes overlook: cultural difference. I felt I had lived in America for nearly 40 years through my TV screen. I didn’t expect to feel so…different. Outside of my home country I don’t always know the code. What are suitable topics of conversation? Luckily we have Texan friends who will help us out and fortunately it’s usually fairly low-stakes. My daughter’s school explained that we needed a home-made post box in time for 14^th February. Nonethless I didn’t realise every child in my son’s preschool class required a treat as well as a Valentine’s card. Next year we will try not to come off as the stingy Brits.

In the grand scheme of things these are minor issues. However, they serve to underline the scale of the challenge for other children who might be newly contending with language, literacy and sometimes the imprint of trauma. It’s a steep hill to climb. The very best thing we can offer in schools is empathy.

By the Hampshire EMTAS Specialist Teacher Advisors with the support of the wider EMTAS team 

In this first blog of the academic year the EMTAS team congratulate students on their fantastic GCSE results, share their new programme of network meetings and update readers on their work with the University of Reading. We conclude this blog with some introductions. 
 
Heritage Language GCSEs 

2023-24 was a bumper year for EMTAS with the Heritage Language GCSEs. 200 requests were made by 11 schools and 187 students were supported by EMTAS Bilingual Assistants in the speaking exam, whilst 70 students had support for reading and writing too. It was great to see so many schools celebrating multilingualism by offering Heritage Language GCSEs to their students. Polish was the most requested language with the largest number of candidates sitting the exam; our Polish Bilingual Assistants supported 38 students at one school alone. Results are in and we are pleased to report that 66% of the students supported by EMTAS Bilingual Assistants achieved the top Grade, 9, with a further 19% achieving an 8.     
 
EMTAS network meetings  

Starting this term, we are tailoring our online network meetings to best meet the needs of our schools. Before the summer, schools were sent a link to a form to complete, allowing us to schedule network meetings on the most popular topics and on the most popular days/times as advised by you. Our programme of network meetings for this term is now live on our website. We are starting on September 17th with a session focussing on the needs of learners who are new to English. Later this term you will have the opportunity to join sessions focussing on the needs of more advanced learners of EAL, a meeting exploring how to use first language as a tool for learning in the classroom and a session considering how to track progress in acquisition of English for learners of EAL. We look forward to seeing you online – book a network meeting now. 
 
University of Reading with EMTAS: research project update 

Our joint research project with the University of Reading continues into this academic year. Naomi Flynn held interviews with the EAL or Traveller co-ordinators and Headteachers of fourteen schools from across the county before the summer. These were very helpful in establishing what schools currently do to support their multilingual, Traveller and Showmen pupils, what they find challenging, and what they would like to see in the new oracy-related training materials that will emerge from this project. Alongside the interviews, Naomi is meeting regularly with the EMTAS teacher team to establish what the principles driving the new materials will be and how we might ensure their accessibility and usefulness to schools. Early this term we will send out invitations for schools to take part in trialling the new resources for us from November 24 – February 25. We’d like to thank those schools who have already taken part; your input has been invaluable. If you have not yet taken part in an interview, and/or want to know more about the project, there is still time (contact Naomi on n.flynn@reading.ac.uk). Alternatively, do please send us your thoughts at this questionnaire link.  

Report on the impact of the Young Interpreter Scheme 

Supporters of the Young Interpreter Scheme and avid readers of the blog will be familiar with research carried out by Debra Page on the Young Interpreter Scheme as part of her PhD. We are delighted that Debra – now Dr Page – has completed her PhD and shared her findings with us. She concludes that  

Read Debra’s report now… 

EMTAS staffing  

Just before the summer break, the EMTAS Bilingual Assistant team welcomed Nyonde, who works with Fiona Calder as Achievement Project Officer for children of black and ethnic minority heritage. Lubna added Urdu to the languages we can cover, and Katya joined our Ukrainian team. Joining EMTAS in September, Anu brings Malayalam and Tamil to our offer to schools and Thibaut joins our teacher team; he’ll be covering schools in the New Forest. All look forward to working with you this academic year. 

Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service | Hampshire County Council (hants.gov.uk)