Submission to Consultation on School Accountability Reform – School Profiles, Improvement and Intervention

This response, which was submitted in April 2025, addressed the potential ways in which school profiles can harness data to strengthen the accountability system to ensure that disadvantaged or vulnerable children who use EAL can thrive at school.

The response also explains how school profiles have the potential to ensure that the exclusionary practices often experienced by these children no longer hamper their social, educational and linguistic development.

We recommended that the Department of Education:

• Considers including in the school profile sufficient information about the context of the school related to the educational attainment of EAL pupils.
• Reinstates both the question in the school census regarding the English proficiency of EAL learners and statutory reporting of language proficiency against the five-point scale used between 2016 and 2018.
• Develops school profiles that are accessible to parents/carers who are new to the English education system, so that they can access all the data they need about their children's school.