St Mary's - numbers of EAL and SEN pupils

Summary

The request sought detailed statistics on EAL and SEN pupils, staffing, and budgets at St Mary's School for 2024-2025. The Department of Education provided current pupil counts and class sizes but redacted specific data on new joiners and certain nationalities to protect privacy, while noting that no dedicated EAL teacher exists.

Key Facts

• As of March 2025, there are 56 children on the SEN Register and 106 with EAL at St Mary's School.
• The total school roll as of 1st April 2025 is 280 pupils across 13 classes.
• There were 28 new joiners since September 2024 with EAL or SEN needs, though specific breakdowns for SEN-only and both categories were redacted.
• The school does not employ a dedicated EAL teacher; EAL pupils are taught in mainstream classes.
• The SEN leader is out of class for 2 days per week, and there are no dedicated SEN assistants.

Data Disclosed

• 56
• 106
• 280
• 13
• 28
• 18
• 41
• 38
• 17
• September 2024
• March 2025
• 1st April 2025
• 2 days per week

Exemptions Cited

• Information relating to five or less pupils

Original Request

Please provide information on number of children with either English as Additional Language or Special Educational Needs on the school roll as at September 2024 and the most recently available data in 2025. details of the total school roll, number per year and class sizes as at September 2024 and most recently available 2025 data. How many new joiners since September 2024 had EAL/SEN or both details of the EAL different nationalities that the school currently supports (number of pupils of each nationality - where this is less than 3 can the information be grouped by region eg Other European, Other Middle East etc) number of dedicated St Mary's School EAL and SEN teachers and other assistants and their hours per week and how many per pupil with these needs. Details of any DESC additional EAL and SEN direct support provided including number of staff and their hours per week. Annual budget allocated for EAL and SEN support Information about any concerns raised by the Head or school staff with DESC concerning ability to support EAL or SEN pupils adequately

Data Tables (1)

Full Response Text

Policy, Strategy and Governance Division Department of Education, Sport and Culture Thie Slieau Whallian Foxdale Road St Johns IM4 3AS

Telephone: (01624) 685808 Website: www.gov.im/dec Email: dec@foi.gov.im

Our ref: 4526090 16th April 2025

Dear ###

We write further to your request, received 19 March 2025, which states:

"Please provide

information on number of children with either English as Additional Language or Special Educational Needs on the school roll as at September 2024 and the most recently available data in 2025.

details of the total school roll, number per year and class sizes as at September 2024 and most recently available 2025 data.

How many new joiners since September 2024 had EAL/SEN or both

details of the EAL different nationalities that the school currently supports (number of pupils of each nationality - where this is less than 3 can the information be grouped by region eg Other European, Other Middle East etc)

number of dedicated St Mary's School EAL and SEN teachers and other assistants and their hours per week and how many per pupil with these needs.

Details of any DESC additional EAL and SEN direct support provided including number of staff and their hours per week.

Annual budget allocated for EAL and SEN support

Information about any concerns raised by the Head or school staff with DESC concerning ability to support EAL or SEN pupils adequately"

Our response to your request is as follows:

1. Information on number of children with either English as Additional Language or Special Educational Needs on the school roll as at September 2024 and the most recently available data in 2025.

There are 56 Children on the Special Educational Needs (SEN) Register and 106 children with English as an additional language (EAL).

(Data as of March 2025)

1. Details of the total school roll, number per year and class sizes as at September 2024 and most recently available 2025 data.

September 2024

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under section 20 of the Act, we are not required to provide information in response to a request if it is already reasonably accessible to you, whether free of charge or on payment of a fee.

By way of advice and assistance school roll data is published annually by the Department and is available to view via the following weblink –

www.gov.im/media/1386790/school-roll-data-september-2024.pdf

Current data as at 1st April 2025

Current Number on roll: 280

There are 13 classes and the number of children per class is as follows:

R- 21 R- 21 Y1 26 Y1 -26 Y2 -19 Y2 -18 Y3 – 21 Y3 – 24 Y4/5 – 23 Y4/5- 22 Y4/5 - 23 Y6 – 18 Y6 -18

1. How many new joiners since September 2024 had EAL/SEN or both

There were 28 new joiners with SEN/EAL:

EAL – 18
SEN - [redacted – Information relating to five or less pupils]
Both - [redacted – Information relating to five or less pupils]

1. details of the EAL different nationalities that the school currently supports (number of pupils of each nationality - where this is less than 3 can the information be grouped by region eg Other European, Other Middle East etc)

Asian - 41 European - 38 African - 17 North American – [Redacted – Information relating to five or less pupils] South African - [Redacted – Information relating to five or less pupils] Ukrainian – [Redacted – Information relating to five or less pupils]

By way of advice and assistance St Mary’s Primary School note a child with English as an Additional Language includes a child whose parent/s speaks in a different language in the home. Many of the children are born in the Isle of Man, they have not moved to the island from other countries.

1. number of dedicated St Mary's School EAL and SEN teachers and other assistants and their hours per week and how many per pupil with these needs.

The school does not have a dedicated EAL teacher. All children with EAL are taught in mainstream with a class teacher.

The schools SEN leader is out of class 2 days per week.

The school does not have a dedicated SEN assistant, all support staff work with all children mainstream or SEN.

1. Details of any DESC additional EAL and SEN direct support provided including number of staff and their hours per week.

The school have two days support from the Department’s EAL Team.

1. Annual budget allocated for EAL and SEN support at St Marys Primary School

EAL Budget 2024/25 SEN Support Budget 2024/25 0 £118,429

The EAL budget is held centrally within the Education Advice and Support Division, the budget for EAL for 2024/25 is £353,786.

1. Information about any concerns raised by the Head or school staff with DESC concerning ability to support EAL or SEN pupils adequately

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the St Marys Primary School and the Department of Education, Sport and Culture do not hold or cannot, after taking reasonable steps to do so, find some of the information that you have requested.

Redacted Content

S39 (1)(a)(b)- Qualified exempt personal information

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information held in the instances where information

relates to five or less pupils as the Department determines that individual pupils may be identifiable.

This information is exempt under Section 39 of the Freedom of Information Act 2015 (Qualified exempt personal information) as it constitutes personal data of a person other than you and under section 8 of the Data Protection Act 2002 the data subject would be entitled to prevent disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under that Act.

As Section 39 is a qualified exemption, it is subject to a public interest test. The public interest must be something that is of serious concern and benefit to the public at large.

Factors in favour of disclosing the information include: - To promote transparency & accountability.

Factors in favour of maintaining the exemption include:
- That pupils and their parents/carers have an expectation that their child’s personal information will remain confidential. Disclosure of this information would contravene that expectation and cause an intrusion into the privacy of the data subject which may lead to some distress. - Whilst the Freedom of Information Act 2015 promotes transparency and accountability and therefore there may be some public interest it is not sufficient to outweigh an individual pupil’s right for this information to remain private.

In assessing the weight to be attributed to each of the factors in favour of disclosing the information and maintaining the exemption, the Department of Education, Sport and Culture has taken the following into consideration:
- The severity of the prejudice
- The age of the information - How far disclosure would further the public interest identified above - Whether there is any similar information the public domain and whether this affects the public interest.

In taking these factors into account the Department of Education, Sport and Culture have determined that the factors in favour of maintaining the exemption outweigh the factors in favour of disclosing the information.

Please quote the reference number 4526090 in any future communications.

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An electronic version of our complaint form can be found by going to our website at https://services.gov.im/freedom-of-information/Review . If you would like a paper version of our complaint form to be sent to you by post, please contact me and I will be happy to arrange for this. Your review request should explain why you are

dissatisfied with this response, and should be made as soon as practicable. We will respond as soon as the review has been concluded.
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I will now close your request as of this date.

Yours sincerely