National Curriculums, and why they concern us SR-EALers.

I am not anti-curriculum; let's get that straight from the start. But, yes, you'd struggle to find an SR-EALer who didn't harbor curriculum 'misgivings.' I don't mean misgivings about curriculums in theory -that is, the curriculum as a 'blue-print,' or guide for schemes of work. My concern lies with school management that foists National Curriculums upon us and insists we follow them to the letter despite students for whom the curriculum was never designed and for which it is, in part, unsuitable. Many in school leadership labor under the view that a curriculum serves not as a means to an end (that proper end being for students attain certain skills or understandings) but as the end in itself. The mantra can all too easily become 'cover the curriculum!' Teachers respond by ticking off items on lists and judge their performance by how many curriculum items they cover in the school year. If they manage to tick off all items in the relevant curriculum section teachers give themselves a clap on the back and see it as a job well done. Inspectors, year group leaders etc., will of course turn up every now and again to check that the 'ticking' proceeds satisfactorily. All well and good, perhaps, but only up to a point. What if the curriculum doesn't quite mesh with student needs in the first place? That is what concerns me.

If we can't persuade you that the National Curriculum isn't a great roadmap for EAL delivery in International Schools, at least listen to our concerns. You'll understand why we become irritable when colleagues insist upon implementing the curriculum ever more thoroughly, or why we prefer doing things 'our way' despite glossy teachers' books readily at hand. It's time to explain the SR-EAL stance on curriculums in more detail. You might not agree with us but you'll understand where we're coming from the next time we 'start up' during planning meetings.

So, first off, let me clarify. As I said, us SR-EALers do hold reservations regarding NCs, in general. At the same time, no one dismisses NC's as unhelpful, irrelevant or fully unfit for purpose. We simply say we could do better given more free rein in 'what' we teach', and 'how' than NC's typically allow for. NCs have not got it all wrong; they just haven't got it fully 'right' and we need to acknowledge this. I am not denying that the NC has much to offer. A devout SR-EALer may yet hold national curriculums in some regard -I do, for one. But no one can tell me that sections dealing with English ideally meet my students' needs. And if they don't, then it follows that trying to implement the curriculum ever more efficiently and diligently can only take us 'so far.'

What exactly about NCs gets us SR-EALers so riled up? In a word, their 'generality' -that distressing quality of 'one-size-fits-allness.' If we're intent on improving EAL delivery then we must face a basic truth: However much effort and research goes into its preparation, a National Curriculum it will never meet the EAL needs of particular students in particular schools. I applaud the curriculum designers' tasked with compiling a document to meet the needs of a diverse national population. But with the best will in the world, those designers have no choice but to piece together a messy compromise that cannot but leave many teachers and students disappointed. An NC curriculum document might serve us EAL teachers, after a fashion. What it will never do is give us that ideal 'match up' with the particular students' (EAL) needs that we're striving for. It may come close, if we're lucky, but it cannot but fall short. All broad-brush, compromise, approaches necessarily do.

This holds for EAL teachers in the UK, but so much more so for those whose careers have taken us to international schools overseas. My professional experience (plus common sense, quite frankly) tells me that slavishly following the English section of a curriculum designed for children in Chelmsford or Ongar will never prove the most time-effective route to exiting my Hanoi based students from the EAL register. How could it? The needs of Thai or Vietnamese English language learners have little in common with the needs of an English first language speaker attending lessons in the UK. This doesn't mean that a national curriculum cannot serve as a guide, and even a good on. Yes, we can sensibly browse through an NC for inspiration and likely come away with useful pointers for future lessons. At the same time, let's not fool ourselves into believing that 'ticking off' national curriculum objectives in the English Section during weekly planning meetings should stand as the proper 'end goal' of responsible EAL staff. The proper 'end goal' must remain, as SR-EALers insist, to ensure that students speak, read and write 'satisfactory' English at such time as they leave our care. A curriculum designed with children of 'Nation X' in mind may help us towards this 'end' but only after judicious pruning and with our students' academic and social needs foremost in mind. Through informed pruning, that is, can we work around the 'generality' issue and deliver bespoke, personalized, lessons tailored to language needs.

But what pruning, exactly? What form might it take? I'll limit my observations to the NC of England, but what I say is true of NCs more generally. First off, you might sensibly (surely) cross out all those provisions in the 'English section' that implicitly assume students of native-like English competence. Why, for example, would EAL teachers choose to spend days teaching Haiku poems to a child who cannot as yet name common classroom objects? Why would we teach expanded noun phrases to children whose vocabulary as yet numbers just a few hundred words and who struggle to ask permission to go to the toilet!? Why kick off the year teaching metaphors or onomatopoeias to students who still cannot respond to simple greetings? Poetry, metaphors and such like can come later, at a more appropriate time on the student's path towards English mastery. The most pressing need of those with no English is (again, surely) a relevant vocabulary and a repertoire of survival phrases they can put to immediate use. Pursuing NC goals for 'Year X' should lie further down the line. If this strikes you as obvious, well, it should. And yet many EAL teachers have no option but to help children work towards national curriculum objectives despite those objectives failing to address even the most pressing language needs. I call it the 'tyranny of the curriculum.'

A second type of pruning concerns not so much language content as 'time allocation.' Some NC topics (I'm talking about the English language section, here) may require far more attention than the curriculum intimates as strictly necessary with our EAL students needs in mind. If you have ever taught in China, Thailand or Vietnam you'll have learnt early on how children struggle with the tenses, subject/verb agreement, plurality and the articles. The national curriculum touches on such grammatical details but, and understandably given specifically English children's needs in mind, does not dwell on these language facets to the extent that EAL children in overseas bilingual and international schools truly require. For my current students, Here in Hanoi these topics remain a key focus of my lessons and will likely do so for some time to come. Commercial materials designed with a view to meeting NC requirements (Hamilton literacy plans, to take but one example), likewise tend to skip over these same grammatical issues.

The third type of pruning involves adding to our teaching those several aspects of English that the national curriculum either doesn't mention at all, or does so only in passing. The most obvious topic that springs to mind is vocabulary, noted earlier. The NC certainly doesn't shy away from reminding us that children reap many benefits from a deep and broad vocabulary, yet scarcely does it venture beyond remarking that children should know high frequency words. I find this understandable -readily defensible even- in the context of students in England for whom the NC was designed. After all, such students enjoy the good fortune of English immersion 24/7. 'Picking up' new word meanings becomes a natural outcome off living and breathing in an English L1 environment. But what about our EAL students? What about children learning English in NC based international schools in Jakarta, Shanghai (etc.), of course, have no such exposure. Just what vocabulary to teach my current students, and how, has become something of a pet research project. I imagine other SR-EALers likewise find themselves struggling to address serious vocabulary deficits. I still cannot fathom why international schools do not take the issue of vocabulary development way more seriously.

It's not just vocabulary deficits. Let's not forget all those grammatical stumbling blocks to which teachers in England hardly need give a second thought. Even before they begin formal schooling, native English speaking children habitually make well-formed questions or negatives with the verb 'to do,' will supply a form of the verb 'to be' when called for, and can construct passive voice clauses. Not so a primary aged child in Vietnam or China. Nothing in the NC (of England), and the veritable raft of commercial materials based on that curriculum, directs us (or alerts us) towards explaining just why "Where you go?" is incorrect, and that "I not play football" should really be "I don't play football." To solve these challenges, and more, we need to break away form the NC shackles and branch out on our own.

So, what can we conclude? I can't help feeling this post carries a certain air of negativity, so let me end with a point on which I suspect we can all agree: 'EAL children do indeed learn English in schools that religiously follow a NC to the letter.' It's not that a NC doesn't work for us EALers. It's just that we believe we could do so much better if only schools would allow us. The more we set time aside to look at children's particular language needs, and the more willing we are to amend and adapt a curriculum to meet those needs, the more effective our teaching will ultimately prove. That uphill quest for professional freedom -that yearning to branch away from 'broad brush' prescriptions- lies at the very heart of what SR-EAL is all about. Now, you might disagree with our views on national curriculums -I get it. I really do. But I'll still wager there is something of an SR-EALer in all of us. We're simply saying why not let that 'little bit' thrive and develop! I cannot see a better way of improving EAL instruction in international and bilingual school settings. Are you with us?