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Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils

Introduction

Why evaluate?

What are the principles of evaluation?

For whom
and how to evaluate?

By
which means
to assess?

How to get involved?

This page will be available in English in 2024. Please refer to the pages in French.

Comment s'impliquer ?

Survey on assessment practices of home language competences

In 2021 and 2022 the Recolang project conducted a European survey to investigate and map the role of plurilingual pupils’ home languages at school, particularly within different education programmes or curricula involving adolescents with a migrant background aged 11-18. The survey focused on identifying and describing the practices of assessing home language skills and their role in different European education systems and beyond. The survey was composed of two strands aimed at different target audiences:

A strand aimed at pupils aged between 11 and 18 with a migrant background and who have one or more home languages other than the language(s) of the school.

A strand for schools and educational institutions, teaching and supervisory staff in schools, reception centres and organisations involved in initial and further professional development of teachers working with this age group (11-18 years).

FULL SURVEY REPORT (add link to pdf)

Want to know more about the possibilities of including pupils’ home languages in assessment? Watch this knowledge clip on multilingualism in assessment.

Objectives

Concrete objectives of the survey were to provide a better understanding of:

● whether and how pupils’ languages and cultures are taken into account in schools and for what educational purposes;

● how language skills and their uses can be recognised in relation to learner progress or to teacher professional development.

Procedure

As very little research has been conducted internationally to grasp how home languages are assessed in different settings, we chose an exploratory design aimed at generating a tentative first analysis, collecting information from different settings and describing the main findings. The data were collected using an online survey amongst 164 institutions and 191 learners from 47 countries. The survey was open throughout 2021 and 2022.
Read more about how the survey was conducted

Untitled Document

● For a large percentage of plurilingual pupils (44%) there are no assessment practices to map their home language skills;

● Many plurilingual pupils are assessed on their language proficiency in the language(s) of schooling (in 69% of the cases) or other subjects;

● Many plurilingual pupils (36%) are assessed in the home language(s) upon arrival at the new schools but only seldomly later;

● The assessment of competences in the language(s) of schooling (LoS) covers all language skills;

● When home languages are assessed, less skills are assessed;

● Assessment of home languages is done for various purposes, the most common being the placement of pupils in appropriate educational levels;

● Standardised and non-standardised materials are used in assessing home language skills.

● The results of the learner survey confirm that most pupils’ home languages are not assessed;

● 33% of respondents claimed to have been assessed in the home language(s) at their schools;

● Assessment occurred in around twenty different languages (with a high percentage for English as a home language)

● 57% of respondents claimed to have been assessed in relation to oral skills in their home language(s);

● The main objective of the evaluation of home language language skills was that of placement upon arrival in a new education system;

● The number of non-assessed languages of the learners is higher than the number of assessed languages (47 against 20).

● Regardless of their status, home languages can remain unassessed when they are not languages of schooling (English as home language is declared non-assessed twice as often as assessed; the same goes for Arabic. French as home language is 3 times more often not assessed than assessed.)

● Only 33% of young people want their home languages assessed. While 79% want to learn their home language better.

What pupils say about their home languages in the school context

In the survey, learners were stimulated to share their opinions about what schools do – or do not do – with their home languages and what they would wish from schools in relation to the development of their multiple languages. The following quotes exemplify what learners have stated.

"I hope to get an assessment of the languages I speak and hope to develop them further to facilitate my future and the job I will be working in."

This Turkish-speaking pupil claims that when home languages are assessed this leads to a higher degree of literacy in the languages and that each language should be considered equally important. In his view, assessment could even contribute to decreasing prejudices against certain languages:

Other pupils just wish for opportunities to study their home languages within mainstream education, like this Bulgarian-speaking pupil in the Dutch setting:

And finally, there are learners that reflect on the fact that their home language is taught as a foreign language in their current school, without any adjustment for the fact that the student is a native speaker:

Conclusions from both survey strands

● There is reduced space for assessment of plurilingual pupils’ home languages.

● Ad hoc practices in home language assessment are extremely common.

● The degree of schools’ involvement with pupils’ home languages is very much dependent on individual stakeholders’ (e.g. teachers, coordinators) own personal interest.

● There is a mismatch between the use of home languages in and outside of the classroom.

● There is a general interest on the part of plurilingual pupils in one another’s languages and cultures.

● There is a great family and learner investment in maintaining home languages.

● There is a mismatch between learners’ wishes in relation to home language use at school and how schools engage with pupils’ home languages.

● Pupils have high ambitions in relation to their proficiency in the home

Implications from the survey strands

● More training and knowledge on the importance of assessing pupils’ home languages is needed in schools. With a few exceptions, this was pointed out in the institutions’ strand and the answers of the pupils confirm the lack of awareness, materials and knowledge on home language assessment.

● A set of evidence-based principles for the assessment of home languages across Europe should be developed and shared among institutions. This could lead to a decrease in ad hoc assessment mainly focused on assessing the language(s) of schooling languages for placement reasons.

● Cooperation between countries should be facilitated in order to collect and share different types of instruments to assess various skills in the home languages, for various age groups.

● The gap between what happens at schools, where a majority of pupils claim that their languages are not taken into account and the strong desire of these same pupils to continue learning their languages should explicitly be addressed. View extra findings from the survey

From the institutions’ strand:

In 44% of the cases, respondents from the institutions’ strand indicated that there was no availability of tools to assess newly arrived pupils:

When assessment practices were available for newly arrived pupils, the nature of the skills assessed could be specified in the survey. As seen in Table 1, in the majority of cases (69%) skills are assessed in the language(s) of schooling, followed by assessment of skills in foreign languages (51%) and in mathematical skills (50%). Less assessed are skills in the home languages (26%), in previous language(s) of schooling (23%) and in other subjects in the language(s) of schooling (17%).

Table 1: Skills assessed in newly arrived pupils

Skills assessed	Yes (%)	No (%)	Cannot answer
Proficiency in the language(s) of schooling of the pupil's current school system	68,8%	20,4%	10,7%
Proficiency in the home language(s)	26,4%	61,5%	12%
Proficiency in former language(s) of schooling	23%	59,3%	17,6%
Proficiency in foreign languages relevant in the curriculum	51%	51%	20,7%
Mathematical skills in the language(s) of schooling	49,5%	28%	22,6%
Skills in other subjects in the language(s) of schooling	16,7%	47,6%	35,7%

The purpose of assessment practices of home languages was investigated. Table 2 shows that there is great variation in the purposes for which assessment is conducted. Assessment if most often done to place pupils in appropriate school levels or tracks (18%), followed at almost equal levels by assessment done for welcoming pupils (13%, such as to recognise pupils’ languages), to offer targeted activities to pupils (13%) and as a part of an overall assessment of the pupil (14%).

Table 2: Purposes of assessment of home languages (multiple answers possible)

Purpose	%(N=186)
Welcoming (symbolic recognition, confidence building, etc)	13%
This assessment contributes to the overall assessment of the student	13.5%
To place the pupil in question in a certain level	18%
To offer targeted activities to this student	13%
To train and integrate this student into groups	10.7%
To issue him with a diploma or certificate	5.4%
To establish equivalence: knowledge of another language can replace a compulsory	7.5%
To inform the pupil and parents	5.4%
No clear purpose	7%

From the learners' strand:

Learners were asked whether their teachers encouraged them to use home languages in class. While in about 46% of the cases, learners indicated that they were not encouraged to use their languages in any school subject, 36% of pupils indicated that in some subjects, they were encouraged to use their languages in class:

Does the teacher encourage you to use your languages in class?

In all subjects

18 %

In some

36 %

In no subject

46 %

Learners were also asked whether they wished their home languages to be assessed at school and 33% answered favorably, while 36% does not want to have their languages assessed. However, about 80% of respondents wished to learn their home language better.

Finally, learners were questioned about what they would like the school to do with their home language(s). About 30% of pupils would like schools to teach them their home languages, 23% would like to be encouraged to use their home languages to learn and yet another 23% would like it if schools would find it normal that one uses home languages to work in groups. 17% of respondents even wished they could present their home languages to their peers.

If you wish to explore the survey, please go to the following links: ADD LINKS TO LEARNERS' QUESTIONNAIRE (EN, FR, .....) and INSTITUTIONS' QUESTIONNAIRE (EN, FR, ....)

The full report of the survey can be downloaded here [add link].

Startseite

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Programm

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2020-2023

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Practices and criteria to assess home/heritage languages’ competences of pupils (incl.migrants)

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Comment s'impliquer ?

Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils

This page will be available in English in 2024. Please refer to the pages in French.

Comment s'impliquer ?

Survey on assessment practices of home language competences

Want to know more about the possibilities of including pupils’ home languages in assessment? Watch this knowledge clip on multilingualism in assessment.

Objectives

Procedure

Institutions' strand

Learners' strand

What pupils say about their home languages in the school context

Conclusions from both survey strands

Implications from the survey strands

From the institutions’ strand:

From the learners' strand: