The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) are working with the National Association for Teaching English and other Community Languages to Adults (NATECLA) to ensure that resources of most value to the ESOL community are transferred to the new platform.
The ETF have communicated their plans for the Excellence Gateway via the following statement:
‘The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) and National Association for Teaching English and other Community Languages to Adults (NATECLA) are both committed to supporting the ESOL practitioner community and are working closely together to achieve this.
We understand that there has been some concern within the community regarding the availability of the ESOL resources once the ETF’s Excellence Gateway platform closes in late Spring/early Summer 2023. The ETF is developing a new platform to replace Excellence Gateway, and this will come online at the same time as Excellence Gateway comes offline. We will be in position to provide 30 days’ notice prior to Excellence Gateway closing.
Excellence Gateway hosts thousands of resources covering many different subject specialisms. To determine which resources should move across to the new ETF platform, the ETF conducted an audit of all resources currently hosted on Excellence Gateway, including how often users access these.
In addition, in 2021 the ETF collaborated with ESOL specialists to undertake an audit of ESOL resources on Excellence Gateway. The audit highlighted some resources that are rarely accessed and will need to be retired.
Over the coming weeks ETF and NATECLA will be working together to confirm which resources should be retired. The ETF are working with NATECLA to ensure that resources of most value to the ESOL community are transferred to the new platform, with regular meetings in place to discuss progress. Once we have a shortlist of resources to be retired, we will make this information available, so that users may download these if they wish to do so.
The ETF bought the ESOL Nexus courses from the British Council to ensure that they continued to be available to ESOL practitioners. At the outset of the new ETF platform project, we recognised the importance of the Nexus courses to ESOL practitioners. The digital licence that enables interactivity within this suite of courses is due to expire shortly and is not renewable.
The terms of the licence, however, do allow us to replicate the content, for future use. ESOL is not an area supported by government grant funding and the ETF receives no financial support for this activity. Recognising the benefit of these resources to the ESOL practitioner community and the importance of these resources, both the ETF and NATECLA are allocating significant resources for this work.
The ETF and NATECLA look forward to working together to successfully transition the ESOL resources to the new ETF platform for the benefit of the ESOL practitioner community. Until the new ETF platform and replicated Nexus courses become available in Spring / early Summer 2023, ESOL users can continue to use all the current ESOL resources on Excellence Gateway.
Kind regards,
The ETF and NATECLA’
Visit the Excellence Gateway
Find out more about ESOL Nexus
View ESOL resources on Skills for Life Network
