Book review - Race Equality Teaching Vol. 25 (no.3) Summer 2007

Enhancing Achievement for Young Bilingual Learners - Lessons from the experience of Bangladeshi heritage children

Tony Eaude visited three schools in Newham and three in Sheffield and, despite the slim bibliography, is up to speed with relevant research such as Eve Gregory's on Bangladeshi pupils in Tower Hamlets. He is also skilful at anticipating teacher's possible provision for their bilingual pupils and showing how this can be done.

So he's produced a 16 page A4 booklet that defines the project and the social and educational context for bilingual and specifically Bangladeshi origin children and makes the case for auditing provision for these pupils. There follow individual cards to be used for training, taking the resource to 60 pages. These cover pedagogy, assessment, gifted and talented pupils, classroom and pastoral support, the parents' perspectives, staff development leadership... Some have brief case studies; all have points for discussion or, even better, impressively pertinent questions. The last cards - part 3 of the pack - are simple audits of: gathering information; the provision made by the school and, finally, 'Exploring the needs of a particular language / ethnic group'.

(Copyright - Race Equality Teaching Vol. 25 (no. 3) Summer 2007)