Measures of success in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) often sit at a distance from how language is actually used and experienced.
For one of my learners, a key moment of progress was being able to buy a cup of coffee in English before class and arrive ready to learn alongside her peers. This kind of development is familiar to ESOL practitioners, yet it remains difficult to locate within official data.
What we count, and what we miss
Attendance figures, qualification outcomes and narrowly defined language benchmarks continue to dominate how ESOL provision is evaluated. These measures may satisfy accountability systems, but they struggle to capture how learners actually develop, participate and use language beyond the classroom.
This is not a minor technical issue as it fundamentally shapes what is funded and valued, and whose progress is ultimately recognised as worth the investment.
Anyone who has taught ESOL understands that language learning is complex, slow and deeply social. Learners often make meaningful progress long before it appears in assessment results. This progress shows up in increased confidence, a willingness to speak, participation in group discussion or the ability to manage everyday interactions previously inaccessible.
Such developments are visible to practitioners and significant to learners, yet they remain largely invisible within formal success metrics.
Progress as capability, not performance
Recent commentary in FE has rightly highlighted the emotional and cognitive demands of language learning, alongside the wider social consequences of underfunding ESOL. However, what is missing from much of this discussion is sustained attention on how current assessment frameworks actively misrecognise success, particularly in community and adult ESOL settings.
In my doctoral research with community-based ESOL learners, participants consistently framed progress in terms of agency rather than accuracy. In interviews, learners consistently framed progress in terms of what they were newly able to do with language in everyday situations.
They spoke about being able to raise concerns with a manager about discrepancies in wages, check food labels to ensure ingredients met their dietary requirements and respond to strangers in the street when asked for directions rather than declining out of embarrassment or fear of getting it wrong.
These moments may appear ordinary, but they mark significant shifts in participation, agency and social confidence. These are not “soft” outcomes. They reflect an expansion of what learners can do with language in contexts that matter to them.
Seen in this way, language learning is not simply about accumulating linguistic knowledge. It is about developing the capacity to act, participate and make choices. Yet these forms of progress sit awkwardly – if at all – within existing assessment structures.
The contradiction at the heart of ESOL
This creates a persistent contradiction. ESOL is frequently framed as a tool for integration, employability and participation. Yet the ways we measure success prioritise short-term performance over long-term communicative capacity. Learners are expected to demonstrate progress through metrics shaped by reporting and audit requirements, prioritising administrative clarity over what learners are actually able to do with language in their lives.
Attempts to modernise ESOL by embedding wider agendas, whether civic, economic or environmental, risk reproducing the same problem if they do not begin with learners’ language needs. Expanding curricula without rethinking how success is measured simply changes the surface content while leaving the underlying recognition gap intact.
Rethinking success without losing rigour
The issue, then, is not whether ESOL should be humane or relevant. Most practitioners already teach in responsive, contextual and learner-centred ways. The problem is that these forms of practice are not adequately rewarded, captured or legitimised within dominant accountability systems.
As a result, ESOL teachers are often required to translate rich, relational learning into blunt data points, while learners are judged against criteria that do not reflect how language functions in real life. This disadvantages learners and devalues professional expertise by reducing complex pedagogical work to compliance.
If FE is serious about supporting integration, participation and social cohesion, it must rethink what counts as success in ESOL. That does not mean abandoning rigour or accountability. It means developing assessment approaches that recognise communicative growth, learner agency and social participation alongside formal language outcomes.
Until then, ESOL will continue to be judged by measures that underestimate both learners and the work done to support them – and FE will continue to misread one of its most socially vital areas of provision.
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