Tudor Primary is a school in Southall in West London. There are approximately 400 pupils on roll, with EAL pupils making up 93% of the school. The Ealing average is 64.7% and the national average is 20.1% (Ealing Primary School Data, Spring 2017). The school also has a high level of casual admissions (9.7% annually, compared with the 7.7% Ealing average). The school welcomes around 55 learners who are new international arrivals and new to English every year, with these pupils enrolling throughout the academic year. Teacher assessments of proficiency in English indicated that only 29.5% of these arrivals were fluent in English in 2017 compared with the Ealing average of
50% in that year.

The school population speaks around 12 different languages, mainly Punjabi, Bengali and Urdu. Farsi, Somali, Arabic, Gujarati and Pashto are also spoken. Most learners are of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds, with 78% identifying as Asian British, 10% as Black British and 7.3% as other heritages. Some learners also speak Italian, as they have previously had two to four years’ schooling in Italy, making English their third language.

According to the school’s OFSTED report in 2018, in Early Years “almost all children speak English as an additional language and are not proficient in either English or their home language when they start school.” In Primary, “the proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is high. Some of these are at the early stage of learning English.”

The new students who arrive have often had disrupted schooling and have no literacy skills in their first language, hindering their language development in English. They also have limited literacy support at home.

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