November’s Big Numbers examines the achievement at Key Stage 1 (KS1) and Key Stage 2 (KS2) in Reading and Writing, as well as the progress made between key stages, focusing on two groups - pupils whose first language is English and pupils who have English as an additional language (EAL).

Key Findings
A greater percentage of pupils whose first language is English achieved the expected level of performance at both KS1 and KS2; however the gap between the two groups decreased from KS1 to KS2. This shows that of the pupils with EAL that didn’t achieve the expected level at KS1, a large number did so at KS2. The progress measure shows that a larger percentage of pupils with EAL made two or more levels of progress between the key stages compared with pupils whose first language is English.

Background
From 2013, the KS2 performance tables will stop reporting on English as a combined measure of reading and writing; the headline measure at KS2 will now become the percentage achieving level 4+ in reading, writing and maths, which will also be used for floor standards for 2013[1].

The Big Numbers

Key Stage 1: 83.7% of pupils whose first language is English achieved Level 2+ in Reading, compared with 67.5% of pupils with EAL. Similarly, 80.3% of pupils whose first language is English achieved Level 2+ in Writing, compared to 64.4% for pupils with EAL. This is a gap of roughly 16% in both cases.

Key Stage 2: 87.0% of pupils whose first language is English achieved Level 4+ in Reading compared with 81.1% of pupils with EAL. 84.0% of pupils whose first language is English achieved Level 4+ in Writing compared with 79.8% of pupils with EAL. These are gaps of roughly 6% and 4% respectively.

KS1 – KS2 Progress: 90.3% of pupils with EAL made 2+ levels of progress in Reading and 93.4% in Writing, compared with 88.1% and 91.6% for pupils whose first language is English. These represent roughly 2% gaps in both cases, showing that more pupils with EAL made the expected progress than pupils whose first language is English.

The gap between groups
The gap seen between the two groups decreases by around 10% for Reading and 12% for Writing from KS1 to KS2. The progress measure indicates that more pupils with EAL made the expected progress compared to students whose first language is English.

This shows that the gap in performance between pupils with EAL and pupils whose first language is English narrows greatly as they move further through their school career; this is important when we consider that there are now approximately twice as many pupils with EAL starting school compared to the late 1990s. The number of children whose first language is other than English has reached 1.1 million, marking a rise of 54,000 in the last year[2]; on average, 18% of pupils in a state-funded primary school will have English as an additional language.

Other notes
These figures corroborate with other studies’ previous findings[3], and show that although some pupils with EAL struggle with Reading and Writing in the initial years of their formal education they tend to improve greatly within a couple of years. It is necessary to note, however, that there are differences in the attainment not only between pupils with EAL and pupils whose first language is English, but also among speakers of different languages[4] due to varying levels of English proficiency[5].

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] The Department for Education, July 2013: School and college performance tables Statement of intent

[2] The Independent, 17 October 2013: English not the first language in 240 schools - with five primary schools having no native-speakers at all

[3] Strand and Demie, 2005: English language acquisition and educational attainment at the end of primary school.
Bhattacharyya, Ison and Blair, 2003: Minority Ethnic Attainment and Participation in Education and Training: The Evidence

[4] Bhattacharyya, Ison and Blair, 2003

[5] Strand and Demie, 2005