Ensuring the attainment of pupils learning English as an additional language: A management guide

The Government's drive to improve secondary education is based upon high expectations for all pupils with appropriate support and intervention to reduce inequalities. This is reinforced by the five aims of Every Child Matters (ECM), most specifically that every child should:

• enjoy and achieve;
• achieve economic well-being.

The vision for inclusive schools based upon high attainment was set out in Aiming high: raising the achievement of minority ethnic pupils (DfES 0183/2003) and is being implemented through various programmes, such as the Primary National Strategy EAL Programme, the Minority Ethnic Achievement Programme, the Black Pupils' Achievement Programme, the Black Children's Achievement Programme and the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Achievement Programme.

The secondary EAL programme builds on this work by helping schools to highlight the issues affecting the attainment of this group of pupils, develop a range of responses and embed these responses coherently into the school's systems and practices.