Monitoring for equality? Asylum seekers and refugees’ retention and achievement in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)

Abstract

Interest in the integration of refugees has grown with the increase in numbers of asylum seekers dispersed across the UK. The ability to communicate effectively in English is seen as the key priority in facilitating integration, while a lack of English language is seen as one of the major barriers to refugee employment. Some £267 million was spent on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes in 2004/05. However, commentators have observed that asylum seekers and refugees continue to struggle to speak English. This paper examines data from interviews with refugees and ESOL tutors, and statutory data recording retention and achievement of asylum seekers and refugees, to explore the extent to which they are achieving in ESOL, and the effectiveness of the existing monitoring system in assessing whether ESOL meets the needs of asylum seekers and refugee learners. It finds that there are major inconsistencies between the retention and success rates observed in the monitoring data and those reported by tutors and refugees. A range of problems are identified that indicate that monitoring is neither robust nor reliable and that refugees and asylum seekers are struggling to learn sufficient English to enable integration.

Keywords:

• asylum seekers
• refugees
• English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)
• integration
• monitoring

Notes

1. From 2007, asylum seekers need to be in the UK for in excess of six months in order to qualify for free ESOL classes.

2. At the time of this study, data were only available to 2004. In addition, they were not available before 2002 because of a change in the monitoring system at this time which rendered data sets incompatible.