Additional language achievement gap is greatest in early years 
 

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in England recently published  two reports that investigate educational achievement by students who speak English as a second language (ESL). There are around one million ESL pupils in England, representing 16.2% of the school population (up from 7.6% in 1997).

The first study analyzed data from the National Pupil Database to find the most at-risk groups of ESL learners and to identify predictors of low attainment for these learners. Among the main findings were:

• At age 5, ESL children were one-third less likely to achieve a target of good level of development than children with first-language English (FLE).
   
• At age 16, ESL students demonstrated a small achievement gap for GCSE grades (58.3% of ESL students achieved more than five A-C compared with 60.9% of FLE students) , yet no gap at all for a scoring system based on performance in eight subjects at Key Stage 4.

• There was no evidence of a negative impact on the attainment and progress of FLE students where there were high proportions of ESL students.

The second study was a systematic review that sought international evidence for effective interventions for raising standards in ESL students. 27 of the 29 studies that demonstrated an impact were from the U.S., one from Canada, and one from the U.K. Five of the 29 studies addressed CPD for educators.
 

None of the interventions met criteria for high ratings for strength of evidence. The authors called for further and more rigorous research to increase the evidence base of effective interventions for ESL students. 

Johns Hopkins University 

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