Page 4 - ELG1601 Apr Issue 435

ELlanguage news
Page 4 April 2016

Tribunal finds for

deported students

MATT SALUSBURY delivered in the UK via its sub- there were ‘thousands of people
writes sidiary ETS Global. ETS’s Toefl deemed not to speak English
and Toeic tests were licensed even though they spoke perfect
THOUSANDS OF international for immigration purposes by the English when they came to see
students deported from the UK Home Office. their MPs’.
could now seek readmission In 2014 an undercover The Home Office failed to
and receive compensation as a investigation by the BBC docu- present evidence of widespread
result of a ‘damning’ verdict by mentary Panorama exposed a fraud in ETS tests at March’s
an immigration appeals tribunal. Toeic cheating scam at one test hearing, and the tribunal found
The tribunal ruled against the centre, Eden College in east its actions were based on ‘hear-
UK Home Office over its deci- London (see April 2014 Gazette, say evidence’ – ETS’s limited
sion to deport students who had page 3). Following the Pano- disclosure of its own findings
taken the Toeic test of English. rama probe, the Home Office on ‘invalid’ results. According
The ruling in March by requested that ETS suspend its to politics.co.uk, most Home
Mr Justice McCloskey in the Toeic tests in the UK for visa Office ‘evidence’ for system-
Upper Tribunal (Immigration purposes. ETS then announced atic Toeic and Toefl fraud came
and Asylum Chamber) dealt its voice-testing software had from a witness statement by two
with an appeal in which Qadir detected 33,725 ‘invalid’ results Home Office officials who had
Ishan, an accountancy student for Toeic tests taken at its cen- attended a single meeting with
from Pakistan, was told by the tres. ETS subsequently withdrew ETS in the US. Expert testi-
Home Office he’d secured his its tests from the Home Office’s mony from Dr Philip Harrison,
visa ‘by deception’ and would Secure English Language Tests voice recognition expert with
be deported. (Selt) system. JP French forensic speech labo-
Many ETS test-takers were While Panorama only discov- ratory in York, demolished the
deported after a series of raids ered Toeic test fraud in a single Home Office case at the tribunal. Courtesy Royal Shakespeare Company
by immigration officers rounded centre, the Home Office subse- The Home Office said in a
up international students and in quently began an operation to statement that it was consider-
some cases their dependents, deport ‘thousands’ of non-EU ing an appeal against the Upper
according to one immigration ‘visa national’ students, accord- Tribunal judgement. Vaz told
lawyer interviewed by politics. ing to both the Independent and the Independent his parliamen-
co.uk. Student deportees, report- politics.co.uk, apparently based tary committee would launch
edly not entitled to see the on the assumption that many of an investigation into the Home Oh this learning, what a thing it is!
evidence against them, could those who had taken an ETS test Office’s actions. The Home
only appeal from afar once had committed fraud. As Par- Affairs Select Committee press
they’d been deported. liament’s Home Affairs Select office told the Gazette a com- APRIL 23 this year is the 400th anniversary of the death of the playwright William
These students had taken the Committee chair Keith Vaz MP mittee decision on any such Shakespeare, with numerous events throughout the UK. (Our headline is from
Toeic test of the Educational said at a recent forum on immi- investigation was expected after Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.)
Testing Service (ETS), based in gration attended by the Gazette, Parliament returned from recess UK state schools report that their EAL students (EAL stands for English as an
Trenton, New Jersey in the US, suddenly among ETS test-takers in mid-April. n additional language and is applied to students who speak a language other than
English at home and so are in need of special support) are very much engaged by
the most famous English author, according to the Royal Shakespeare Company
News in brief Correction (RSC) press officer Jo Hammond.
Even those EAL students who are ‘unremarkable in other subjects do
In our March 2016 edition particularly well when it comes to Shakespeare’ to the point of ‘suddenly
the article ‘BC report pro- becoming very engaged and excelling’.
Farewell to Catalonia vokes controversy’ (page It seems that, when it comes to the Shakespearian language, EAL/Esol students
8) erroneously stated that are ‘on more of a level playing field because Shakespeare’s language is alien at
TWO SHEFFIELD University students were forced to ‘half of Turkey’s universi- first to everyone’. EAL students are ‘perhaps better at making sense of something
finish their term before it started at the Pompeu Fabra ties fall outside the top without having to understand every syllable’.
University in Barcelona, Spain after they discovered that 200 ranked worldwide’. David Dickson, executive headteacher of the Eastbury Community School,
lessons were to be taught in Catalan rather than in English, This should have read Dagenham (outer London), told the Gazette his EAL students were making ‘fantastic
the Independent reported. ‘the top 2,000 ranked progress’ as a result of the school’s work with the RSC’s Shakespeare on Your Feet
The students were part of the Erasmus+ programme and did worldwide’. The author programme, which gets students performing scenes from his plays. EAL students
not receive a list of the subjects taught in English, so were not became aware of the typo are ‘perhaps more confident with different language’ (the sixteenth-century English
able to tell which language their chosen modules were taught after it had gone to press, of Shakespeare’s plays) and therefore ‘take more risks … than the “indigenous”
in. Both went to the university office to complain but were and alerted us to it. This students’, although ‘they all love it’.
informed that all English classes were full and it was too late has already been cor- Shown above is an RSC workshop in a different outer London institution, St
to change, so they had to return to England. rected on the EL Gazette Alban’s School.
digital edition online.
Flash of inspiration
AN ENGLISH language teacher has lit up his school using a
solar power amplifier entirely made from scrap parts in Pune, Thousands study Teachers fail
west India, the Indian Times reported. Tefler Kishore Bhagwat
was tired of the frequent power shortages in his school so he
developed a solution for the children.
His invention went viral and was showcased to district for free in Germany Mexican test
education officials. It will now be implemented in
neighbouring schools.
OVER 10,000 US students around €650 per term, the German HALF OF all Mexican teach- also teachers who know how
SA colleges go English are fully enrolled on German Academic Exchange Service told ers evaluated last autumn failed to teach the language. The lat-
higher education programmes the UK Daily Telegraph. Not only an English language test, the est news about the programme
SAUDI ARABIA’S state-owned Technical and Vocational this year, Andrea Pérez writes, are the prices of German courses Mexico News Daily website has undermines Nuño Mayer’s
Training Corporation (TVTC) has announced that English nearly all of them for free, attractive, the facilities are also a reported. Aurelio Nuño Mayer, prediction last September that
language will be the medium of instructions in its 33 colleges according to the Institute for draw for students – transport is secretary of the Department of country would be bilingual in
of excellence and 21 institutes in partnership with the private International Education. cheaper and health insurance in Education, recognised that the ten to twenty years.
sector, the Arab News website reported. ‘This strategy being Meanwhile, in the US total Germany is €80 per month, much National English Programme According to Mexicanos
offered by TVTC is in response to the needs of the labour student loans have reached £850 less than in the US. for Basic Education, which was Primero, an education advo-
market in the Kingdom,’ a source from the organisation told billion, an increase of 500 per According to the Washington launched six years ago, was not cacy group which carried out
the news website. This new policy aims to prepare cent for US families since 1985, Post, in recent years German producing the results the gov- a study of English proficiency
‘competitive’ graduates for the labour market, which requires the Washington Post reports. For companies have struggled to fill ernment had been expecting, in the country, 80 per cent of
proficiency in English. US students Germany is a great thousands of jobs due to the lack Andrea Pérez writes. students aged fifteen to six-
place to study – in a private US of qualified applicants. To solve One of the aims of this pro- teen ‘have no understanding
USAID backs Pakistan plan university students pay on aver- this problem, German universities gramme was to make English of the language, and just 3 per
age more than $31,000 for tuition have started to offer undergradu- language a compulsory sub- cent met the standards set by
THE UNITED States Agency for International Development and fees, while in a public-sector ate as well as postgraduate courses ject for all school children the SEP’, according to Mexico
(USAID) is backing a project to improve the English language
reading skills of primary students in some regions of north US university the average for an taught in English. More than 1,100 aged five to fifteen. But the News Daily. The most surpris-
English-medium degree courses
main obstacle for the Mexican
in-state resident is $9,000 and
ing result from the Mexicanos
Pakistan, the APP news agency reported. DIL, the Islamabad-
based NGO which launched the programme, wants to train for out-of-state students almost across numerous subjects have education system in terms of Primero study was that 15
been launched in recent years,
$23,000, the BBC reports.
per cent of English language
English language learning has
teachers using tablets and involve children in various activities
to improve their English proficiency. Most of the sixteen Länder and Berlin, with three universities, been teacher training. Nuño teachers did not speak English,
(federal states) in Germany do not stands out as the most popular Mayer pointed out that the meaning that ‘one can be an
charge tuition fees, and for those destination in the country with country needed not only teach- English teacher without even
that do the upper limit is usually more than 1,000 US students. n ers who can speak English but knowing the language’. n