English Speaking Board (International) Ltd

Category: Uncategorised

  • ESB attends The Great Oracy Exhibition

    ESB was delighted to participate and showcase the impact of its externally assessed oracy qualifications at the Great Oracy Exhibition, hosted by Voice 21 in Manchester this week.

     ESB’s Chief Assessor, Ben Jackson, Senior Product Developer, Lauren Kearney, Chief Executive, Tina Renshaw and Business 0fficer, Abdul Miah

    The event provided an opportunity for ESB to demonstrate its commitment to oracy education and connect with other like-minded educators in the field.

    ESB’s Chief Executive, Tina Renshaw, says:

    Plenary panel members including Becky Bainbridge, CEO of RECLAIM, one of ESB’s centres

    It was an honour for us to attend the Great Oracy Exhibition. We had a wonderful time discussing the impact of our externally assessed oracy qualifications and the significance of such qualifications in boosting learners’ potential and equipping them with lifelong skills.

    The headline Sponsor ‘Poetry by Heart’  led a great opening session and we look forward to exploring ideas of how we can support each other’s work in the future.

    Communication-rich experiences are key to helping children, young people and adults find their voice, developing confidence, self-esteem and self-respect. Human connection, individual agency, group work, and confidence are all central to the ESB assessment experience.

    It was fantastic to engage with other educators and thought leaders in the Oracy field. Voice 21 has created an important and vital Oracy movement which lifts all of us up who work in the Oracy space. We spoke to over 100 teachers and look forward to continuing many of those conversations.

    Also in attendance was Becky Bainbridge, a plenary panel member and CEO of one of ESB’s current centres, RECLAIM, a youth leadership and social change organisation based in Manchester.

    Becky commented: “Arrived for my panel discussion at the Great Oracy Exhibition and absolutely thrilled to see our friends, ESB here!”

    ESB and RECLAIM’s work together commenced in 2019, with its young learners completing ESB’s Speech Pathways qualification, ‘Speech to Inform’. Learn more about the impact of our oracy qualifications on RECLAIM’s young people here.

    Tina adds: “Overall, the event was a huge success, and excellently planned. We look forward to participating in further similar events in the future to promote the cause of oracy.”

    ESB offers a wide-ranging portfolio of confidence-building oracy qualifications from Early Years to KS5 and post 16 mapped to national curriculum standards.

    Why ESB qualifications?

    • A specialist awarding organisation with over 70 years of expertise in creating, assessing, and awarding qualifications for Oracy
    • External assessment model with professional assessors
    • Enables learners to gain 30 UCAS points at KS5
    • Financial support available for schools in areas of disadvantage or with above average levels of pupil premium or those offering specialist SEND provision.

    If you are interested in finding out more about ESB’s oracy qualifications and whether your organisation is eligible for financial support, please contact our Business Development Team at business@esbuk.org. We would love to hear from you.

  • ESB is looking for patrons to help reach more learners facing disadvantage

    ESB International is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year and to mark the occasion it is looking to bring on board new Patrons to strengthen the organisation.

    The organisation has approached a number of individuals who staff feel would contribute positively to ESB’s Outreach Campaign, an important part of its ethos.

    The outreach work financially supports organisations and groups whose learners face disadvantage due to poverty, migrant or asylum seeker status, or special educational needs and disabilities.

    The new patrons will play a crucial role in raising our profile to attract more organisations to access ESB’s Ofqual-accredited confidence-boosting English language and Oracy qualifications.

    ESB’s Chief Executive, Tina Renshaw says:

    We are delighted to be seeking new patrons to help us to expand our financial reach to even more disadvantaged groups. Our staff have nominated individuals whom they admire and who demonstrate and champion Oracy or English as an additional language and have a personal or professional connection to the causes of disadvantage that most impact on the development of these skills.

    To learn more about ESB’s incredible work and this exciting initiative, please watch the video below.

    Tina adds:

    We would like our new patrons to raise our profile and so help us attract donors and philanthropists to grow what we do with our outreach programme.

    Since 2020, we have committed £45,000 to support our organisations and we continue to focus on, and support, the areas of most disadvantage. In 2023, we will have committed £30,000 in one year.

    We would like to do more, and so our patrons will help us have a bigger profile which we believe will help us secure external funding to double the scale of this work.

    ESB is excited to welcome new patrons on its journey to help close the disadvantage gap and to be part of its inspiring story.

    If you are interested in speaking to our team about our Oracy and/or English language qualifications or if your centre qualifies for financial support through our Outreach Programme, we would love to hear from you. Please email business@esbuk.org or call 01695 573439 extension 201.

  • ESOL Skills for Life Centre Notification: Updated specifications and live assessment papers

    ESB updates and improves its ESOL Skills for Life qualification specifications and assessment papers in response to a report published by Ofqual: Understanding ESOL Skills for Life qualifications.

    You can view and download our updated specifications here:

    The updates include the removal of true/false and yes/no questions from ESB’s ESOL Skills for Life Reading papers at all levels. Reading is still assessed with multiple-choice, matching, short-answer, and gap-fill questions, and all other aspects of the assessments are unchanged.

    In addition, to keep our assessments relevant and authentic, the tasks in ESB’s ESOL Skills for Life Writing papers (E1-L2) will no longer include postcards, letters or stories.

    The new specifications contain additional detail on the content of the qualifications and how they are assessed, and are an invaluable reference tool for teachers and tutors.

    We are committed to providing the best possible ESOL Skills for Life qualifications for our centres and their learners. The updates to the specifications and assessment papers are a result of our commitment to continuous improvement and ensure that our qualifications meet the highest standards and remain relevant, motivating and accessible to all our learners.

    ESB’s Product Development Manager, Anthea Wilson

    The purpose of Ofqual’s research was to understand how effective the current regulatory requirements are for ESOL Skills for Life qualifications in terms of their design, assessment, alignment, comparability, and validity.

    ESB was one of the six Awarding Organisations that participated in the research and submitted feedback.

    If you have any queries regarding the above, please contact us at product@esbuk.org

  • ‘1.9 million children are behind with their talking and understanding of words’ – ESB endorses the findings in Speech and Language UK’s newly published report: Listening to unheard children

    Speech and Language UK has recently published a report which highlights the significant rise in children struggling with talking and understanding words.

    English Speaking Board (International) wholeheartedly supports the report’s recommendations and the charity’s call on the Government and the education system to take urgent action so that these children have the skills they need to face the future with confidence.

    ESB knows the impact when young people and adults don’t have the speaking and listening skills needed to thrive in their lives.

    • Ineffective communication and poor oracy skills can significantly impact an individual’s learning, life and work. 
    • Communication-rich experiences are key to helping children, young people and adults find their voice; developing confidence, self-esteem and self-respect. The pandemic adversely impacted these experiences for those children already living with socio economic disadvantage.
    • Acquiring good levels of Oracy are further challenged by disadvantage – socio-economic, special educational needs and disabilities and people whose first language isn’t English. Sadly these often act as barriers to educational attainment and aspirations.

    These are the problems that ESB wants to address.

    Says ESB’s Chief Executive, “Finding your voice is absolutely central to who we are as human beings. Many young people and adults are eager to reach their full potential, but the education system can be a barrier for those with additional or significant learning needs. That’s where ESB comes in. Our empowering, confidence-boosting oracy qualifications help prepare individuals for success in both their personal and professional lives.”

    ESB is committed to helping close the disadvantage gap and the key points of this new report mirror ESB’s purpose to empower all learners to develop key oracy skills, regardless of their background.

    Adds Tina, “We reach out to children and young adults who may be affected by poverty, difficult socio-economic conditions, special educational needs and disabilities, and we offer them that unique opportunity to focus on oracy through our Ofqual Accredited qualifications.

    “Through our Outreach Campaign, we provide financial support through our Christabel Burniston Fund to schools in areas of disadvantage, as well as schools offering specialist SEND provision.”

    What is the impact of investing in ESB qualifications that focus on oracy?

    ESB’s recently launched National Impact Report outlines the impact of its externally assessed qualifications on the development of learners’ oracy and personal development.

    Impact at Primary Level

    Teachers told us that:

    • ESB qualifications have had a huge impact on the speaking and listening skills of their learners in the wake of the pandemic, with a 9/10 impact score.
    • Learners spoke with an increasing command of standard English.
    • Learners were judged to be far more competent and confident in their ability to gain and maintain the interest of their peers and to stay on topic, initiate and respond.
    • Learners improved their group work skills.
    • Learners also said that they were much happier to read in class after they had completed the assessment.

    Impact at Secondary Level

    • 62% of learners told us that the qualifications improved their ability to work well in a group and helped them to stay focused and to collaborate with others.
    • Teachers said that the impact of completing these qualifications in a post-pandemic world was of significance for these young people, with an 8/10 impact score.
    • Learners also felt they improved their ability to speak confidently, audibly and fluently, enhanced their vocabulary to articulate better, and improved their own abilities and targets.

    To find out more about ESB’s National Impact Report, please watch the video. You can also download the Executive Summary of the report here.

    ESB understands that investing in oracy has its dividends and has both an immediate and life-long impact on learners.

    Tina says, “It is ESB’s goal to expand our reach to more organisations where learners face disadvantage. By developing speaking and listening skills, we stretch the most able, support the least confident and realise the potential of all, to help close the disadvantage gap.”

    If you are interested in speaking to our team about Oracy qualifications or if your centre qualifies for financial support through our Outreach Programme, we would love to hear from you. Please email business@esbuk.org or call 01695 573439 extension 201.

    You can read Speech and Language UK’s full report here.