This blog is from one of COBIS' Supporting Associates.

Written by Helen Wood, Head of School Partnerships, Password English Language Testing.

I recently ran a COBIS webinar on understanding English language qualifications, but my real aim was to encourage international school leaders to consider whether they measure the English language proficiency of their students. This is important, not least because research shows proficiency in English is the key predictor of educational achievement among pupils with EAL.

But how we measure linguistic proficiency is a tricky question. A Proficiency in English (PiE) ‘best fit’ coding scale was briefly adopted as part of the annual DfE school census return in 2017, but was dropped just two years later. Perhaps unsurprisingly, PiE’s existence barely even registered in the independent school sector. Little wonder then, that few teachers who qualify in England have experience in assessing the academic linguistic competence of their learners with EAL.

So, what is the international school leader to do about this? I would advocate a pragmatic approach. Why adopt any specific nationally based system or scale when, as an international school, it makes more sense to use an internationally recognised measure. This points to adopting the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) which provides a Global Scale aimed at non-specialist users and benchmarks learner progress across six levels from A1 (Basic User) to C2 (Proficient User).

The CEFR has been adopted across the Council of Europe’s 47 members and is used worldwide in countries as diverse as China, Japan, Vietnam and Mexico, too. This framework for describing what a language learner ‘can do’ has been translated into 40 different languages – a gift in the international school setting where explaining to parents the level of English proficiency required for their child to succeed is so important.  

From a teaching perspective, the Council of Europe’s website has sections dedicated to the ‘languages of schooling’ where you will find gems such as ‘Can Do language descriptors for history, civics and mathematics’ - a grid of subject specific task types learners should be able to accomplish through the medium of English at each level of the CEFR.  

For those leading on teaching and learning there is, among many other free resources, the substantial tome: A Handbook for Curriculum Development and Teacher Training: The Language Dimension in All Subjects. Spend some time exploring the free resources and you will find much to appropriate or adapt for your context.

Perhaps most reassuringly, you almost certainly have existing knowledge of the CEFR levels within your school to build from, rather than reinventing the wheel. MFL teachers will know both Cambridge and Edexcel benchmark their IGCSE modern language exams to it. Similarly, in 2016, the IBO mapped the language components of the IB Diploma course to the CEFR to demonstrate their alignment. The reason for this? Pupils applying for degree courses in an English speaking country where they also needed a visa were finding their university offer included an English language requirement. For British universities, that meant an accepted test of reading, writing, speaking and listening aligned to the CEFR. If your school delivers A levels, you may have come across this problem and have someone running IELTS courses for the students affected. IELTS is a test of academic English proficiency aligned to the CEFR, as are tests such as TOEFL and Password Skills which are also used for this purpose.

EAL purists will argue that the CEFR is for measuring a student’s foreign language acquisition, not an additional language being used as the medium of instruction. But for my money, this is splitting hairs, given the CEFR is widely used in schools delivering some aspect of their main curriculum through a language other than their student’s mother-tongue (i.e following a Content and Language Integrated Learning methodology). Moreover, it would seem absurd for international schools to ignore the very tool universities commonly use to ensure their students have the language skills to succeed.

The CEFR gives you a framework for recognising everyone’s proficiency skills, whatever the language, whatever the level.  For schools with multilingual pupils, parents and staff, it seems the ideal way to cherish that diversity whilst also giving you a ‘language in common’ for describing the proficiency in English of your learners with EAL.

Helen Wood is Head of School Partnerships at Password, an online testing company specialising in CEFR aligned assessments of academic linguistic proficiency for international users of English in school, college and university settings. She is a former Head of International Section in a UK independent school and Head of EAL.