I was honoured to be invited to Sunday evening's celebration of Roz Carter's MBE, to be given to her by the Queen in April. Roz set up and ran HLS until her retirement a couple of years ago. Through her leadership and continuing legacy HLS is respected nationally and internationally for the quality of support given to teaching children with little or no English language capability. The service has meant that Hounslow's children who arrive in our schools not speaking or understanding English, achieve results that are as good as or better than locally-born children - and that Hounslow's school results are a massive success story across the board.
Until this year, HLS was funded through the Government's EMAG (Ethnic Minorities Acheivement)grant with an additional £500k of direct council funding. Both the grant and the central funding were pooled, with the specialist teachers being centrally employed and trained, then being allocated to the schools as needed. HLS has developed a body of knowledge and professional expertise that can be shared among their specialist teachers and with schools, to ensure the best start for children. This expertise is so valued that the Government's London Challenge scheme is funding HLS to spread that knowledge with schools and local authorities across London. Apparently, many schools in other areas treat EAL (English as an Additional Language) children as though they have "special needs", when many will have been in school since their early years in their birth country.
The council funding meant that the teachers were allocated to schools according to both the need in terms of numbers in a school, and where possible matching teachers speaking the language of the pupils. One school may have several HLS specialist language teachers visiting them during the week. It also means, that as happened at one local school, that if on the first day of term, several children arrive unexpectedly speaking only Polish, HLS can provide a Polish-speaking teacher immediately to support those children through their first few days in school. This is incredibly valuable for schools with children who have many different home languages, and the kind of support that will not be available now.
A year ago the Tories running Hounslow pushed through the cut of the central funding - £1/2 million. As a result HLS is being virtually broken up. Those schools with sufficient EMAG grant are employing teachers directly - probably only one at each school, so the range of languages available to a school is gone. The professional support and learning is decimated, and some schools are using their grant to employ teaching assistants to provide specialist language support which should be provided by qualified and properly trained teachers. We opposed the cut last year, but to no avail, despite overwhelming support received in the way of petitions, letters, phone calls and meetings. Unfortunately it fell on deaf ears - many of the Tory group thought HLS was a mother-tongue service. Most had no interest in the needs of children arriving in our schools and who need all the tools they can to integrate and play an active part in our society.
A sad day indeed, and an insult to Roz Carter and all she acheived over 28 years.
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