Page 3 - ELG1601 Jun Issue 437

June 2016 ELlanguage news Page 3

London school NYPD

goes bust for blues

second time A New York Police officer is
suing the department she spent
sixteen years working for after
being punished for speaking
Spanish with a co-worker, writes
THe eAST London School of required by law and were not Sarah Lally.
Jessenia Guzman reported
english Ltd (eLSe) in Aldgate, given pay in lieu of notice. It that her co-worker asked, in
London closed suddenly on 29 is unclear whether they will be Spanish, ‘what’s up?’ and that
April, leaving seventeen staff eligible for payments from the Courtesy British Council Singapore she replied, ‘Nothing, just chill-
without jobs. A last-minute government’s Redundancy Pay- ing.’ Hours later, Guzman was
attempt to organise a manage- ment Service, which provides given a permanent mark on her
ment buyout to save the school for employees of bankrupt com- record for violating the NYPD’s
failed. All students have been panies, though repayments to english-only language policy.
found places in other schools this service were made under According to the department,
through the english UK Student the 2012 company voluntary officers must speak english ‘while
emergency Support Scheme. agreement, presumably in lieu British Council backs bilingual babies they are conducting business for
A director of the company of money paid to staff in 2012. the department, unless speaking
confirmed to the Gazette that Asked to comment, the director The British Council is to open a bilingual pre-school in Hong Kong in August. The a foreign language is necessary’.
winding-up proceedings were told the Gazette that all operations International Pre-School, which will teach English and Cantonese and have This policy – which Guzman
issued against the company, and financial matters were ‘han- specific times set aside for Mandarin, will follow the UK-based International claims she didn’t know existed –
which is wholly owned by L2 dled locally’ in the UK and that Primary Curriculum. The British Council already has bilingual pre-schools in violates ‘civil rights, constitutional
Language Consulting of Poland, he hoped that they had been man- Singapore (pictured above) and Madrid. rights, and … anti-discrimination
when it failed to meets its obliga- aged ‘in an appropriate manner, The adoption of a bilingual model of early years learning, rather than a purely laws’, according to the lawsuit.
tions under a company voluntary acting in aspects in accordance English-medium one, is supported by much of the research on this age group. In Former police commissioner
agreement set up in 2012. Under with UK law’. Under english a randomised control trial in the US state of New Jersey, for example, three- and Ray Kelly defended the policy, tell-
this agreement the company, law, officers of a company can four-year-olds from both Spanish- and English-speaking backgrounds were ing the ABC network that hearing
then called eLT Banbury after be made personally liable for the assigned by lottery to either an all-English or English–Spanish pre-school people speak other languages in a
the first UK school acquired by unpaid taxes of employees if it programme which used an identical curriculum. police station ‘could be at the very
L2 Language Consulting, was is found that failure to pay was a The study found that children from the bilingual programme emerged with the least disconcerting’. The rule is still
legally obliged to repay its cred- result of fraud or neglect. same level of English as those in the English-medium one, but both the Spanish- on the books, but the NYPD sends
itors £118,0000 over five years, Some teachers have found speaking and anglophone children had a much higher level of Spanish. tweets in Spanish and 24 per cent
with some 90 per cent of the debt work with other language schools of all patrol officers are Latino. n
owed for unpaid taxes, includ- – aided by english UK’s Huan
ing employees’ income tax and Japes, who has ‘posted on behalf
national insurance payments, of eLSe’s teachers on our member
according to documents held at forum and elicited quite a few job
Companies House. offers and opportunities for them’,
The tax authorities may be owed english UK told the Gazette.
more money following the recent The eLSe director confirmed
closure, if deductions for staff to the Gazette that references to
income tax and national insurance the east London School of eng-
have not been made. Teachers had lish and eLT Banbury had been
been issued with freelance con- removed from partner schools.
tracts, seen by the Gazette, stating L2 Language Consulting owns
their fees ‘were inclusive of VAT, at least one language school in
national insurance, income tax’. Poland, the Cambridge School of
However, a report on the details english warsaw, according to its
of this contract issued by the UK website. eLT Banbury no longer
government’s employment Status functions as a language school but
Indicator suggests ‘that the worker as an online teaching operation
is an employee in respect of this operated by L2 Language Con-
engagement’, meaning that tax sulting from its website address.
would be owed by the school, if The director told the Gazette that
the contracts were indeed treated ‘the owner is also very disappointed
in the way the wording suggests. in the closure’ and that ‘neither the
east London School of eng- owner nor the directors have ever
lish staff were not given the one received any dividends or remu-
week’s notice of redundancy neration’ from the business. n

News in brief with Sarah Lally

Jail for dishonest lecturer

AN eNGLISH lecturer at the Università d’Annunzio in Italy
has been given a jail sentence of over five months for letting
two students pass an english exam ‘with eight correct answers
out of seventy’, the Italian press reports. The two students,
including the mayor of a nearby town, had been recommended
to him by another lecturer, who had been arranging ‘easy’
exams in exchange for money – and who was also arrested. At
the trial, one witness said that ‘he perceived something was
not entirely legal’ in the way exams were being run.
US state takes new LOOK

THe STATe of Massachusetts in the US wants to move away
from a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching eLLs. A
proposed law named Language Opportunity for Our Kids
(LOOK) aims to provide flexibility to match student needs.
Massachusetts has a prominent eLL population, making up 19
per cent of the school system. Mother tongues range from
Spanish to Cape Verdean Creole to Vietnamese.

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