English for Speakers of Other Languages
Debate between Preet Kaur Gill and Paul Blomfield(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Preet Kaur Gill
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, and I will touch on that later in my speech.
Government cuts to English for speakers of other languages over the past decade have been ruthless; let us not pretend otherwise. Refugee Action’s report, “Turning Words into Action”, shows that Government funding for ESOL in England fell from £212.3 million in 2008 to £105 million in 2018. That is a shocking real-terms cut of almost 60% in a decade. Unsurprisingly, this decline in funding has been accompanied by a decline in adult participation in ESOL classes by nearly 40% over the same period.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate, which is about a subject many of us have been raising over the last nine years as we have seen the erosion of courses. Does she recognise that there is a new threat to funding for ESOL courses, because the European social fund has been a significant supporter of those courses? Does she hope that the Minister will today give a commitment to match, pound for pound, funding from the European social fund for ESOL courses in future?
Preet Kaur Gill
I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention, and he is right. So many Members across the House have been campaigning for this over the past decade. I hope that the Minister will respond to his request.
Last month a report by the Government’s social research team, using methodology agreed with the Department for Education, found that the demand for English language teaching was high, with almost three quarters of survey respondents reporting a “significant demand” for English language learning provision in the communities they serve. However, providers are struggling to meet that demand. Over half the respondents found it “fairly difficult” to meet demand, and one in eight found it “very difficult”. The overstretching of these providers hits learners hard, particularly the most vulnerable. New research carried out by Refugee Action found that 59% of refugees did not think they had received enough ESOL teaching hours and only 34% of respondents felt that their current level of English was enough to make them ready to work in the UK.
Third sector organisations are unable to fill these gaps because limited funding means they have little or no access to hardware and technology to support their teaching.