Language Barriers In Schools

With the UK being rich in diversity there is a growing number of pupils in the UK school system that have English as an additional language (EAL).

The figure stands at around 20% across the country, with London having more than 300 different languages spoken in their schools. This demographic is consistently increasing – going up from 18% in 2015/16.

Data from The Office of National Statistics predicts that over the next 25 years almost 75% of the UK’s population growth will come from net international migration, and typically immigrants will speak English as an additional language.

This trend presents a growing need for resources and support for pupils and their families. Research by Save the Children found that children who are taught in their own language learn better. They say that for millions of children, mother tongue based education represents one of the biggest gateways to achieving quality education and the opportunity of a better life.

Transforming the classroom experience

Pocketalk is a multi-sensory two-way translation device. It utilises the best translation engines around the world to provide a consistently accurate experience across 82 languages, including localised dialects and slang.

Earlier this year Pocketalk worked with Aston Clinton Primary School in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, home to 400 students aged between four and 11 years old, to help them transform learning for some pupils who were facing challenging language barriers.

The most recent School Census (Jan 2022) showed that 25% of pupils living in Buckinghamshire reported EAL, with frequently spoken languages being European 4.1% and South Asian 10.1%.

At Aston Clinton Primary, around 5% of the children do not speak English as a first language, and some do not speak or understand any English at all. This was the case when a Bulgarian girl joined the school in KS1. She didn’t speak or understand any English at all, and her parents spoke very little English. The language barrier between school and the family caused severe upset and distress for the child, particularly when her parents left at drop off. Without knowing what the little girl feared, the staff at the school were unable to reassure and comfort her that she was safe and cared for.

When faced with communication difficulties, the school immediately opted to use an online translation tool. However, for safeguarding reasons the website was not accessible on the school’s network and the tool didn’t offer Bulgarian as a language. Staff are not permitted to use phones in the school, so solutions were limited.

Within a couple of days of the little girl arriving at the school, we donated a device to help overcome the language barriers, which Melissa Garraway, a SENCO lead at the school, describes as a saviour to the child’s education.

She says: “The child was so distressed it meant she would only be at school for an hour or so but once we started to use Pocketalk, the little girl remained at school for a full day and has done so ever since. It made such a difference being able to communicate. We could allay her fears and worries and help her to understand where she was and that she was safe.

“We could understand what was causing upset and it transpired that she thought she was being left. That she wouldn’t see her parents again. I don’t think she would’ve stayed in the school without the support of this technology. It has been invaluable.”

Since using Pocketalk in a classroom setting, the little girl has thrived and in just a few weeks she was able to sound out her first word in English – ‘cat’.

The teachers have also started to use it to help overcome language barriers for another Bulgarian child who has been attending the school since November 2022, in KS2. He had never attended school in Bulgaria and joined Aston Clinton Primary unable to read in his own language, which became incredibly challenging in the classroom.

Pocketalk translation technology solves communication problems by enabling real-time conversations. The Pocketalk device overcomes language barriers efficiently by instantly translating 82 different languages.

The power of conversation

In UK schools, non-English speaking students can feel isolated and often get left behind as language presents itself as a tremendous obstacle. Fear of not understanding or being misunderstood results in less engaged students, hindering their academic potential.

Pocketalk’s goal is to remove communication barriers and create an environment where learning is not solely bound by language comprehension. With Pocketalk, true authentic dialogue can take place, liberating students and empowering teachers and parents.

Melissa concludes: “Early years learning is crucial to a child’s development and education and without Pocketalk, these two children would never have been able to learn and enjoy school in the way they have over the last few weeks.

“Children as young as four are only just learning to read and write in their mother tongue, let alone a second language, so being put into an environment where they cannot converse with teachers or fellow students can be incredibly isolating for them.

“Pocketalk is a very safe, GDPR compliant device, which has opened up life-changing opportunities for the children in our school who speak little, or no, English.”

A global issue

The technology has also helped the US education system. When Janet Brosmer, a Curriculum Director at the Vigo County School Corporation, was attending an education conference in Indianapolis a couple of years ago, she was introduced to Pocketalk and now has over 30 devices in her school setting to provide translations in real time.

Janet says: “They enable teachers and administrators to converse effectively with parents and students alike. They’re used frequently with new families wanting to register a student for school whose English speaking abilities are challenging or non-existent.

“When parents are doing a task as monumental as enrolling their child into school for the first time, it’s reassuring to make sure you understand everything, and that parents and teachers and administrators are on the same page. It helps us to welcome families and reassure them that we’re doing the best for their child and we’re there to help.”

Understanding the solutions

There is a clear need in the classroom, and wider education space, for translation tools but these can often come with significant costs and be incredibly slow to implement and integrate when there is a requirement for budgets to be reviewed and authorised by public sector authorities.

The need for better resource to address the growing number of children with EAL comes at a time when schools already face stretched budgets. It’s reported that cuts are already having a ‘genuine negative impact’ on quality of education, as some schools are struggling to fund even basics such as books and pencils.

This creates even more difficulty to support the language needs of the growing number of pupils who speak EAL. However, the positive news is that there are cost-effective ways of addressing the issue.

Schools could engage with interpreters, but this isn’t always readily available if the child speaks a minority language, and it’s these children who are the most impacted by a communication disconnect. In person translators are also typically an expensive option.

A language line can be accessed which can be less expensive than other solutions, however it could create difficulty in a noisy environment such as a classroom and neither of these options, that require a third party, facilitate relationship building between teachers and students.

Schools could look at utilising free online translation tools, however, as we saw with Aston Clinton Primary School, some websites can be blocked from an internal server for safeguarding reasons and in schools, staff aren’t permitted to carry their phones around. These platforms are also limited in language cover and don’t include minority languages. They require users to input with the format language to get accurate translations – something children don’t naturally do. Again, this was something we saw when Aston Clinton Primary was looking to translate from English to Bulgarian.

Another consideration is that these tools can occasionally offer inaccurate translations because it doesn’t take into account regional accents and slang.

Hardware solutions, such as Pocketalk, can offer instant translation of large pools of languages with greater accuracy. While they do require Wi-Fi, mobile data or a hotspot to work, these devices offer both audio translations and text and it also negates the need for a smart device to be available and taken into classrooms.

Moving the conversation forward

Overall, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to language translation in education and each school will have different needs depending on the diversity of their catchment and the children enrolled.

At a time when EAL is becoming more common in the UK, especially with the arrivals of Ukrainian refugees, it is hugely reassuring for the education sector that solutions are out there, which can be game changing for pupils’ learning.

Schools want to celebrate diversity and not let it become a barrier to young people and their futures.