My first teaching job was with International House in Milan, when you still needed ‘permission to stay’ (and to work) in Italy and blimey, those days are back.

I had trained in England and now I was living abroad and working and earning. I loved it. Enough to go on to Man Uni to do a post grad course, with a vague idea of going to China (when China was closed) but never did. I taught ‘Specific English’ to managers, oil drillers, lawyers and accountants in England and in far off (and then unknown) Qatar. And then I decided to do something socially useful. I worked at a Centre Against Unemployment in Northampton then ran a community project in Leeds. Everything I had learned teaching English in companies applied to everything I did after. ‘Learner-centred’ approaches had been expected - companies were paying for Specific English so staff could do their jobs. So why should unemployed and other people with no money not get the same from English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and adult learning in general? Why should they take whatever was going and be grateful? They were entitled to better. Let’s skip forward 100 years  - and here I am, working for Health Education England on their future ESOL strategy.

ESOL Sharing Practice Group

The ESOL strategy advice to HEE will come from listening to practitioners, working for Trusts and other Healthcare employers, who are willing to share ESOL practices that work, and to learn from each other; practitioners who can identify gaps for HEE to fill, in ESOL support, products and services. Taking a ‘whole organisation’ approach to ESOL – one that includes all workers, support staff of all kinds and face to face health workers at all levels – seems obvious but isn’t always practised – there are traditional divisions between  learning for ‘support’ and ‘professional’ staff but we aim to overcome those – in ESOL at least. HEE has a large Skills for Life (and Work) network – English, maths, digital, and ESOL – plus communications using all these skills – and practitioners for the ESOL Sharing Practice Group are drawn from this network. We plan to try out some interesting ways to share ESOL practices and resources when the project moves on. ULRs with good ESOL practices to share can get in touch. ESOL learners are still entitled to better.