Higher Education and Voluntary Sector Collaboration for ESOL Provision

In autumn 2014, the University of South Wales (USW) and the Welsh Refugee Council (WRC) established a collaboration to provide essential ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) classes for migrants in Cardiff who were unable to access formal lessons due to long waiting lists. The depth of this partnership and its life-changing impact are clearly documented through direct conversations, personal acquaintance, and documented interviews with the refugees, asylum seekers, dedicated staff, and trainee teachers involved in the project.

The venture began modestly with a weekly class of fifteen learners, but the overwhelming demand quickly alerted the organisations to the great need for language provision. Consequently, the project expanded rapidly, and in little over eighteen months, the previously empty rooms at the WRC headquarters were hosting six English language classes attended by over sixty refugees and asylum seekers each week. This collaboration offers mutual benefits: it provides USW’s final year undergraduate TESOL students with invaluable, real-world teaching practice, fulfilling their requirement to teach at least six live classes. Meanwhile, the migrants gain crucial language skills, which they describe as a “key” that “opens a lot of doors” to integration, study, and employment in the UK. This deeply personal and enriching project has consistently been described by those involved as a highly successful, rewarding, and satisfying venture.