Free ESOL classes – is voluntarism the answer to our ESOL crisis?

I picked up this card in a cafe while visiting my daughter in York. I looked them upon the York St John University website, where the classes are listed under the international students heading, along with courses on English for academic purposes. In addition, the classes are clearly aimed at local (non-student) people as well.

As the website says, ‘These classes are open to everyone (with the exception of beginners) over the age of 18’. They are taught by trainee teachers, and are free to participants; presumably the teachers are unpaid, but they gain experience and can use the classes to build their CV.

I don’t know who the participants are, but it looks to me as though the classes are open to to migrants, refugees and other potential local ESOL learners – presumably alongside some of the university’s overseas students. Is this a good idea?

It certainly helps fill a gap. According to the Labour Party’s spokesperson for skills, government funding for ESOL in England fell from £203 million in 2010 to £90 million in 2016. Of course I’d prefer to see the funding restored to its 2010 levels, and teaching undertaken by experienced professionals, but at the moment that seems a remote possibility, at least in the short to medium term term.

So while I am concerned that we seem to be reverting to voluntarism, I take my hat off to York St John. And in the longer term, we need to keep restating the case for publicly funded adult ESOL learning as a great way of achieving a cohesive society.

Integration courses in German adult education: who participates?

German adult education provides relatively generous (compared with other European nations) opportunities for migrants wanting to develop their language skills and integration prospects. A 2018 study, called Who Visits the Integration Courses?, reports on a survey of participants. While many are migrants of all kinds, the courses increasingly include those who have come to Germany as refugees.

Image from the Federal Information & Press Office

The survey covered 606 participants, equally divided between those from the previously dominant participant groups (EU migrants, migrant workers, existing migrants’ families) and refugees. The sample were following 42 different courses spread across five different states.

• The majority of refugee participants were male (80%) with an average age of 30. The non-refugee group were slightly older, and a majority (56%) were female
• The refugees came from 19 different countries, with 71% from Syria, while the non-refugee migrants were largely from central and south-eastern Europe
• A quarter of refugee participants and a sixth of the other migrants had spent less than ten years at school
• A high proportion of the refugees were Arabic speakers, followed by those who spoke both Arabic and Kurdish
• Three quarters of the refugee participants had some competence in English, and a quarter in French, as foreign languages; the non-refugee migrants showed a broadly similar foreign language profile, though with a slightly larger number clsiming some prior knowledge of German
• Both groups of participants made considerable use of digital translation services, with Google Translate predominating

While the refugee group shows considerable diversity, and thus a range of different needs, the authors identify a clear sub-group of disadvantaged learners, who have relatively short schooling, limited occupational experience, and little foreign language competence. This group is mainly male (70%) and from the near/middle East, followed by participants from central/south-eastern Europe.

Coercion and adult education: the case of Austrian asylum-seekers

Austria has many wonderful qualities and I’ve always enjoyed visiting and learning from it. But I’m not so comfortable with a recent announcement by the country’s Bundeskanzler Sebastian Kurz, who plans to link welfare benefits for asylum-seekers with their competence in German.

Deutschkurs, from the website of Caritas Wien

To date, monthly social welfare payments for Austrians and asylum-seekers alike are a minimum of 863 Euros (£768/$983) for a single person. In future, asylum-seekers will receive 563 Euros (£501/$641) until they achieve B1 in German, though an exception will be made for those who can speak English to at least level C1 (see here for a full explanation of the language levels).

Previously, attendance at a language course was required only after a positive decision on asylum. I reckon at least a year is needed for someone from a different language tradition to achieve B1 in German, quite possibly longer. And that is assuming that (a) you are literate in your own language and (b) can find a course in the first place. Effectively this measure places asylum-seekers in a waiting room, where they will inevitably struggle to survive until they can leave a course with a nice neat certificate.

Bundeskanzler Kurz has justified the change with reference to the 2015 ‚refugee wave‘. This group was disproportionately composed of young adult men, and Kurz claims that a high proportion have preferred welfare to an apprenticeship. Even if there is something in his claim (if so, much of it is due to the slow rate at which asylum claims are being processed), the decision will also affect children, single parents and older asylum seekers.

The new requirement is also being introduced at a time when support for language courses has been cut. In the last year Austria recognised 22,000 asylum seekers; yet there are only 7,000 places available. And when the Catholic adult education provider in Steiermark offered its own courses, it was roundly attacked by Kurz’s coalition partner, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs.

This is among a number of migration-related measures introduced by the government, which is a ‘blue-black’ coalition of Kurz’s conservative Österreichische Volkspartei with the right-populist Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs. Remarkably, some of these measures have been directed against migrants from elsewhere in the EU (but not, significantly, against migrants from Switzerland).

Times have clearly changed in the Alpine paradise since I posted a rather positive and optimistic analysis of Austria’s adult education partnership and its achievement. The  coalition’s decision seems to me wrong in principle and likely to backfire in practice. Meanwhle, I have great sympathy for those adult language teachers who will be faced with the practical consequences, and with those migrants who no doubt will be roundly denounced for failing to integrate.

Adult education as “workshop of democracy”: Germany’s President welcomes adult educators to Berlin

It is a sign of how seriously Germany takes adult education that Joachim Gauck, the country’s President, gave the welcoming speech at the 14th Volkshochschultag. This is particularly good news for adult educators world wide, as it comes a month after President Obama publicly praised the active citizenship tradition in adult education, which I blogged about here.

Gauck’s welcome was uplifting and well-informed, and I give a couple of extracts below. And while he observed the formality of thanking the organisers for their invitation, he added ‘You’ve probablyalready noticed: I’m coming to you very gladly’. The speech made me wish I’d taken the train to Berlin for a couple of days, and I’ll give a sample of it here. As usual, I am sure someone will let me know if I’ve mis-translated!

The President opened with the following two paragraphs:

In times of change, institutions often do well to reflect on their roots and their central essence. Only those who are secure in their identity  can confidently help to shape social change. Let me therefore, before I turn to the digital challenge, which you want to discuss today and tomorrow, first remember Max Hirsch, the liberal union leader and pioneer of community colleges.

It was Max Hirsch who in 1878 founded in Berlin the first Volkshochschule in Germany, the Humboldt Academy. The goals he sought back then are still valid, even if we would formulate it differently today. Hirsch wanted to spread ‘higher, genuinely scientific education’ and, as he said, in ‘in all parts of the population’. He wanted a thematically wide range, namely, literally ‘for those who require thorough instruction’. Finally, he wanted to provide every individual with the opportunity to develop through education into a mature, responsible citizen. Into a citizen who is equally committed to their own personal and professional development and for the community in which he lives.

Gauck then spoke about what he sees as the chief characteristics of the Volkshochschulen. They are, he said, open to all; they are pluralistic and bring different cultures together; they are civically engaged, with social and political responsibilities. He spoke highly of the adult education movement’s support for refugees. He then alluded to the conference theme of digital inclusion, and spoke of its potential for reinforcing as well as changing the nature of adult education. He praised the online portal Ich will Deutsch lernen, created by the German Volkshochschul Association to support the integration courses run by local Volkshochschulen.

His concluding paragraph is worth translating in full:

Community colleges are vibrant institutions, as is demonstrated not least by the theme of this congress. You can help create social change, precisely because you stand on a stable foundation of values and are firmly rooted in local communities. Our civil society needs such institutions, now and in the future. I encourage you, therefore:  continue to keep your ear close to the pulse of the times, try out new things, and have difficult debates. And stay as you were and how you are: Open to all, diverse and civically engaged.

Gauck, a former Lutheran pastor who was part of the oppositional neues Forum movement in East Germany, and he has a track record as a campaigner against racism and xenophobia. He has said that he won’t be seeking a second term of office, which seems a shame, but it is striking that he – like several of his predecessors – has played a very open role in public debate rather than striking the sorts of postures which party leaders are required to do (though nominated to his post by the Greens and Social Democrats, he is no aligned with any party himself).

I’m also wondering whether a largely ceremonial President is the way to go in a future British Republic. It’s very striking that Ireland and Germany have had some thoughtful and interesting characters in the role, and I suspect this is because it attracts people who have something to say, rather than those who have schemed and fought their way to the top of a party heirarchy. There is a debate in Germany over whether the post should be abolished; I rather hope it isn’t.

Jewish refugee children and a 1930s work camp

Refugees are very much the talk of the moment, evoking memories of earlier groups of people who sought and found refuge in these islands. One of these was the Kindertransport movement, which after Kristallnacht helped to settle thousands of refugee Jewish children from Nazi Germany. As with today’s Syrian refugees, it was a surge of public opinion that forced the government to act; and again with contemporary echoes, government opened its borders to under-17s, on the understanding that they would return to Germany when things improved.

Much of the responsibility for practical arrangements was delegated to local authorities and voluntary bodies. However, the government did make some facilities available, including a holiday camp at Dovercourt Bay near Harwich, as well as a number of other sites where refugee children could be housed until voluntary agencies or individuals could find a more permanent home, perhaps a foster family or a hostel.

National Archives: From the the First Annual Report for the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany Limited, November 1938-1939

One of these was a former workhouse in Suffolk. Bosmere and Claydon Union Workhouse was a substantial building, originally constructed in the 1760s and upgraded in the nineteenth century. In 1920, the government took it over for use as an Instructional Factory, training ex-servicemen in handicrafts until 1923. Two years later it re-opened as a training farm, preparing the unemployed in batches of 300 for emigration to the white Dominions of Canada and Australia.

Organised emigration came to an end with the global crisis in 1929. As part of the Labour Government’s plans for compulsory training of the unemployed, the Ministry of Labour took the farm over in 1930 as a Transfer Instructional Centre, in which capacity it trained young unemployed men until it too closed in February 1933. It seems to have remained empty until 1939, when the government made it available to a voluntary group for use as a transit camp where boy refugees could learn English and handicrafts while awaiting transfer.

The Kindertransport movement is reasonably well documented. The Ministry of Health kept administrative files on the care provided for the children, the Home Office kept records of their movements, the Foreign Office reported on the persecution of Jews in Germany, and the security services speculated on whether the political views of 16-year olds were of any interest to the state. The National Archives has placed a sample of these files on its website, together with teaching notes.

There are also reasonably good records relating to individual children. Some recorded their memories for the Kindertransport Association or the Association of Jewish Refugees. Diane Samuels recorded oral reminiscences for her play about the movement, and other memories are held by the Wiener Library.

I’ve picked two of these stories, but many others are available. Max Dickson, formerly Max Dobriner, was first placed in Claydon and then moved to a former labour colony site near Oxford. He served in the British army, first in the Pioneer Corps and then the Commandos, and later interrogated German prisoners of War, taking part in the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals before returning to Britain and marrying a local girl.

Sigi Faith, born Siegfried Samuel Feitlowitz in Hamburg, was ten when he arrived at Harwich. He found the diet at Claydon monotonous, but otherwise recalled it as great fun: “The house had been converted to house some 800 boys and was just perfect for a 10 year old – no discipline, attendance at meals was optional and it was much morefun building a raft and drifting in the nearby river”. After a few months, he was placed with a family in Oswestry, subsequently moving to London where he founded a chain of shoe shops. His parents escaped to Shanghai and survived.

After the last of the children was moved, the camp was used to house Italian prisoners-of-war, and became derelict after the War. By 2003, one intrepid visitor discovered that the site had apparently become a gathering place for sexual adventurers; I cannot confirm this personally.