English as an Additional Language Service (EALS)
1. What is EALS?
We are a team of specialist EAL teachers and Bilingual Support Officers (BSO). We work with pupils who have English as an additional language to help them access the curriculum and fully integrate in to school life. We work with pupils from the Foundation Stage, KS1-4 and post-16.
We have BSOs speaking 17 of the languages spoken by pupils in East Sussex: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Farsi, Italian, Kurdish Sorani, Lithuanian, Mandarin, Farsi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.
2. What EALS offer
EALS offers two main support packages:
The Full Support Package includes:
- Direct Teaching Interventions
- Direct BSO Support
- Direct support with projects and initiatives: February Is Celebrate Your Home Language Month, The Val Larkin Dual Language Writing Award, The New Arrivals Programme, Pupil Ambassador Programme and Parent Ambassador Programme
- Mother Tongue GCSE Support
- Parental Engagement
- plus All elements of the Advisory Package
Priced at 100% of the DfE funding your school gets for EAL (no more to pay, regardless of new arrivals)
The Advisory Package includes:
- An EAL Advisory teacher assigned to your school
- Pupil Assessments including Initial Assessments, Parent Questionnaire and Mother Tongue Assessments in 17 community language and classroom observations
- Support with home-school liaison
- Access to EAL-friendly teaching resources
- February Is Celebrate Your Home Language Month
- The Val Larkin Dual Language Writing Award
- *The New Arrivals Programme, Pupil Ambassador Programme and Parent Ambassador Programme consultations
Priced at 25% of the DfE funding your school gets for EAL (Top ups for direct interventions)
EALS Subscription only (available from April 2022)
Priced at £1000 for primary schools / £1500 for Secondary schools (Top ups for all interventions)
3. How to access support from EALS
If you already have a package with EALS you can talk to your Advisory Teacher about what you need, or you can contact the EALS@eastsussex.gov.uk EALS Manager Deborah at Deborah.owen@eastsussex.gov.uk or the Bilingual Support Team Leader Sue at susan.vanhaeften@eastsussex.gov.uk
The sign up window for packages of support from 2022-2024 is currently open. Your Headteacher will have received an email outlining the options available. The closing date for responses is 30 November 2021
For more details on the packages available to schools go to East Sussex | Services 2 Schools Webshop
4. Useful EALS resources
Go to East Sussex | Services 2 Schools Webshop to find the Advice and Training, Training and Teaching resources, and all the EALS Newsletters available to your school