Information for schools on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)

Many schools have students from diverse cultural and language backgrounds. These students may be refugees, new migrants or students from migrant families born in New Zealand.  They all bring diversity that adds richness to a school’s learning environment. 

Migrant families have come from many different regions of the world including:

• The Pacific Islands (such as the Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji);
• North Asia (such as China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan);
• South East Asia (such as Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia);
• South Asia (such as India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan);
• The Middle East (such as Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt);
• Africa (such as Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, South Africa);
• Europe (such as Bosnia, Croatia, the Netherlands).

Many students have English language learning needs. Where these needs are identified, state and state integrated schools are required, under the National Administration Guidelines, to make adequate and effective provision for learning for success. This is supported by the statement in the draft The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (2006): “Their teachers must combine the teaching of content with the explicit teaching of English vocabulary, word forms, sentence and text structures, and language uses and must clarify the specialist language used in each learning area.”  The Ministry of Education’s Literacy and Numeracy Strategy supports English language learners and the Pasifika students are targeted in the Ministry’s Pasifika Education Plan.

Funds are available for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) programmes to support students who come from backgrounds other than English. Such programmes build on the students’ language skills and provide a bridge, enabling students to participate in the mainstream. While not all English language learners are involved in ESOL programmes, they may still need support with the academic language of the classroom.