Ellen Wilkinson Primary School offers high quality Primary and Early Years education for 490 pupils aged 3-11 years. We recognise that a high proportion of our pupils have English as an additional language (EAL). This means that these pupils use one or more languages other than English at home or in their community.  Our local community in Beckton is diverse and there are approximately 53 languages spoken in our school community.  At EWPS we celebrate and support everybody’s culture, tradition and home language.

How we support EAL learners at EWPS

At Ellen Wilkinson Primary School we provide lots of additional support for our EAL learners. We encourage and facilitate the use of other languages as learning tools and provide opportunities for pupils to link to their prior knowledge. Within lessons we provide language scaffolds and contextual support for meaning to assist pupils with their English language development.  We also give our EAL learners lots of visual supports and prompts, ensuring that all lessons are fully inclusive of their needs. Our language rich class rooms provide the necessary stimulus for children to acquire spoken and written English quickly.

We run intensive immersion English interventions during the morning sessions for pupils who are very new to the English language.   These sessions, which usually run for a school term or a quarter, focuses on practical, everyday English and Basic English language skills, with an emphasis on speaking, listening and vocabulary.

How we know your child is succeeding

At EWPS we regularly assess and track the progress of our EAL learners.  We begin with a baseline assessment of a pupil’s level of skills and knowledge of English when they join our school.  Our ongoing assessments inform us how each EAL pupil is responding to receiving an education in English and how far the pupil is able to express his or her knowledge in the English language, ensuring that our EAL learners are making a good rate of progress.

Further information

If you would like to find out more information please contact:

• Your child's class teacher
•  Deputy Head  teacher/SENCo /Inclusion Leader: Mrs Owen – Amadasun