03/09/2026
Entry Level English should never mean Entry Level thinking.
And I also don’t believe that somebody’s ability to pay should determine whether they get the opportunity to learn.
Hi, I’m Ju Julie. I’m a teacher with nearly 30 years in education, and these days I describe myself as one teacher with multiple classrooms.
One of those classrooms is ESOL — English for Speakers of Other Languages — which I deliver through my social enterprise, Diamonds Community Learning Project CIC.
On Tuesday, I introduced my big September mission: to fund 150+ ESOL learning places for the 2026/27 academic year.
Today, I want to explain why those places matter.
For me, good ESOL comes down to two really important words: navigation and agency.
Navigation is about being able to find your way through everyday life.
And I don’t just mean knowing which bus to catch or how to find a particular building.
Life is full of systems that we have to navigate.
A letter arrives through the door. What does it say? Who sent it? Is it important? Do I need to do something?
Your child’s school sends you a message. What are they asking you? Do you understand the choices available? Can you ask questions if you don’t?
You need to make a healthcare appointment, deal with housing, open a bank account, look for work, understand a bill or find support when something has gone wrong.
Where do you start?
That’s navigation.
And then there’s agency.
Agency is about having the ability to make choices and act on them.
It’s having enough English to ask questions, express an opinion, make a decision, ask for help, challenge something you don’t understand, say yes — and, importantly, say no.
It’s being able to say:
I don’t understand.
Please explain that again.
I disagree.
I need help.
I would like something different.
Those might look like very simple English sentences.
But what they enable somebody to do is anything but simple.
And this is something I feel very strongly about:
Entry Level English should never mean Entry Level thinking.
Someone might only have a small amount of English available to them while having incredibly sophisticated thoughts, knowledge, skills and experiences in the languages they already speak.
My learners are adults with whole lives behind and around them.
My job isn’t to simplify who they are because their English is at Entry Level.
My job is to help them develop more of the English they need to navigate their lives and have greater agency within them.
And that brings me back to my September mission — and to social enterprise.
Providing good ESOL costs money.
There is teaching, planning, assessment, resources, technology, administration, venues and all the other things that have to happen behind the scenes to create a place to learn.
For Diamonds, we’ve worked that out at £300 for one learner’s place for the academic year.
But here’s the important bit.
The person who benefits from that learning does not necessarily have to be the person who pays for it.
If a learner can afford to contribute towards their own learning and wants to, brilliant.
A family might help.
An individual might choose to fund somebody else.
A business might fund one place — or five or ten.
A charity, community organisation or other partner might fund several.
And grants can fund learning too.
That’s where social enterprise becomes so important to me.
Instead of asking, “Can this person afford £300 to learn?”
I want us to ask:
“This learning place costs £300 to provide. How can we fund it?”
Because free to the learner does not mean free to provide.
But neither should somebody’s ability to pay determine their ability to learn.
So throughout September, I’m working to fund 150+ ESOL learning places for this academic year.
£300 funds one complete place.
Or £25 a month funds one place across the year.
If you’d like to fund a place, contribute towards one, introduce me to somebody or an organisation that might help, or simply want to know more about what we’re building, reply to this post or send me a message.
Let’s have a conversation.
