EAL or OAL?!

[caffinefreak]

Hi All

We're having a bit of a dilema and I can't seem to find a difinitive answer anywhere (sigh...)

If you have a child in your setting who has an english speaking parents and another language speaking parent, do you classify them as English as an additional language or not? We have some families (single parent and both parents) who speak another language at home and absolutely consdier these children to be EAL, however, we have many who have one English parent and one other nationality parent, in all cases we ask parents what they consider their child's first language to be, however, Ofsted accused us of pandering to parents, so if they say English but we know mum speaks another language to them (but English predominantly as for example dad doesn't speak mums language) should we still include them as EAL and also do any of you lovelies know of any good EAL tarining our staff could benefit from?

Thanks in advance

[catma]

They may speak English but by being dual heritage the child's DfE ethnicity coding would be any of the non white British definitions so they would be within the ethnic minority achievement group of your setting in any case. It's not all about the language a child uses themselves per se, but about the access to other languages that a child may have which can impact (positively or negatively) on their development of English. In a school they would be defined as EAL.

Cx

[flowlow]

we have the same issue I don't class these children as EAL but we refer to them as dual language and dual heritage (even thought they have on their enrollment they are English) I thought it covered us as it shows we are aware of it and make provisions even if its only that we spend a little longer with the parent to make sure they understand things.