Autumn-Winter ESB News

A lot of people come to our regional CPD events, and our recent national conference in July attracted a record 200+ delegates. Over half of these had never been to a NATECLA conference before and quite a number were not members. But an organisation like ours is only as strong as its membership, so I would urge people to join us if they want to help to support ESOL. One of the last things I did as co-chair was to establish a lower membership rate for voluntary organisations. We have a webpage of links and resources and are working with voluntary ESOL on a code of practice for the sector. ESB: You have been very involved in campaigning within NATECLA for an ESOL Strategy for England. Can you tell us why the strategy is so important, and what would be the benefits for learners? JR: I would say that the campaign has brought together stakeholders and Business Development Adviser, Jackie Johnson (left) and Product Developer, Suzanne McKittrick at the 2018 NATECLA Conference

policymakers and focused attention on ESOL. We ran two successful events at Westminster in 2016 and 2017, and we were extremely fortunate that the campaign coincided with the publication of the Casey report and the APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) report on social integration, which highlighted how intrinsic knowledge of English language was to being able to integrate in society. Both of these reports contributed to the publication, in March 2018, of the integrated strategies green paper which had, as a major component, the proposal for an ESOL strategy for England. Now that the consultation has ended, we have formed a monitoring group to make sure that the strategy is formulated through

consultation with all stakeholders, especially learners, and that it has measurable outcomes that can be reviewed periodically.

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