“She speaks English fine. So why is the writing behind?”

At least six years, and that is normal

The Australian Education Research Organisation tracked over 110,000 students learning English as an additional language through NSW public schools from 2014 to 2022. For a child starting school at the Beginning level of English, the finding is plain.

The report puts it this way: students starting at Beginning levels of English can, on average, expect to participate equitably in curriculum learning only after at least six years of schooling— consistent with international research putting the figure at roughly five to seven years. Each phase of the progression took longer than the one before it: the time for half of the students to move from Beginning to Emerging was a year and a month, Emerging to Developing about a year and eight months, and Developing to Consolidating about two years and seven months EAL-12.

The same researchers published a second figure, and it is worth having both. That six-year number comes from analysing the students’ NAPLAN results. When the project instead analysed teachers’ own judgements of the same 111,135 students, the median came out at five years and two months. The researchers say plainly why the two differ: NAPLAN measures reading and writing only, and it is sat every two years, so it registers a milestone late, while a teacher’s judgement is holistic and counts speaking and listening too EAL-13.

Neither number is the softer one. Five years and two months is a median, so half of those students took longer — the middle range ran from three years ten months to six years seven months — and the researchers call their own estimates conservative, because about 7% of students slipped back a phase after first reaching the top one. The honest answer to “how long” is that it depends on what you measure, and that every way of measuring it lands in years.

Sit with what that means. A child who arrived in Year 2 is still on that trajectory in Year 8. Nothing has gone wrong. The timeline is simply longer than the conversational fluency that made everyone — teachers included — assume the work was finished.

You are far from alone in this

In the 2024 calendar year Victorian government schools enrolled 8,678 newly arrived EAL learners, an 8% increase on 2023 and more than three times the COVID-affected 2021 figure of 2,695. Those students came from 135 language backgrounds.

This is an ordinary Melbourne classroom situation, not an unusual one — and the scale is part of why a stretched school may not have the time to explain the six-year timeline to you.

What the study does not say

• It is NSW data.111,135 students, but in one state system. Victoria is not measured here, and the research deliberately excluded First Nations students learning English as an additional dialect — a decision its authors recommend be addressed by a separate project led by First Nations researchers.
• It measures trajectories, not interventions.It describes how long the journey typically takes. It does not test whether tutoring, or any other support, shortens it — so nobody, including this practice, can honestly promise you that it does.
• “On average” hides real variation. First language, age on arrival and prior schooling all move the number substantially for an individual child.
• The two figures are one project, not two studies. The six-year and five-year numbers come from the same 111,135 students, analysed two ways. They are not independent findings that happen to agree, and nobody should cite them as though a second team had confirmed the first.

What actually helps, given a six-year timeline

• Stop reading the lag as a verdict.A Year 8 report that says “needs to develop analytical writing” may be describing a child exactly on schedule. That reframing is worth more than any worksheet.
• Keep the first language. Nothing in this evidence suggests dropping it helps, and the academic language a child builds in one language is not lost when they build it in another.
• Target academic English, not conversation.The gap is in the written, formal register — the sentence that carries an argument. That is the specific thing worth teaching, and it is what the writing clinic works on, free to read.
• If VCE is ahead, check the EAL pathway. VCE EAL is a distinct subject with its own eligibility rules; the four Englishes compared sets out how they differ.