Migrants required to pass A Level Standard of English

It's proposing to move from B1 to B2 on the scale which I think is entirely sensible.

I moved to France for uni when I was in the B1 category and, frankly, it was a daily strain until my language skills improved. I definitely wouldn't have been able to work in any kind of skilled environment (including customer service of any type) at the level as was at then.

a grade C in gcse is just about able to say your name and order a cup of coffee in a cafe whilst telling the barista that you like playing tennis on Sunday morning. My daughter got a B (grade 6) in Spanish last year. She has zero functional Spanish and I don’t think could even count to 100. People need to be able to speak workplace level English if they are coming here to work.

B2 on the CEFR scale is what you need to function in a greater depth in society - your English is good enough to hold an ongoing conversation with someone. If you’re at uni, you really need C1, and C2 is professor level and definitely better than most native speakers! B2 is an exam I could pass (native speaker) without thinking too much about it. C1 I’d need to engage my brain a bit! If anyone’s interested in what’s expected, google ‘Cambridge English First practice paper’.

Years ago I worked as a cleaner at a doctors surgery and a man brought his wife for an interview. They were from Algeria and she didn't speak any English so he translated for me and the head receptionist and we were happy to take her on but he wanted to see where she would be working but the lady in charge said no because there were areas the general public couldn't go. It was a huge multi functional practice.
She was a lovely lady and eventually picked up a lot of English from us and told us she'd been here a year and her dh didn't allow her to learn English or integrate really but wanted her to earn. I can't really put into words how disgusting I found the way he treated her.
So I think it's essential that everyone who comes here has to learn at least enough to be understood including grandma and grandad.

Calling it A Level standard is misleading. It isn't A Level English to a native English speaker. More like Frnech A Level to a native English speaker. It is B2 level, which most working migrants will already be capable of as it would be very difficult to manage a working day here otherwise. It is conversational level English.
Not an unreasonable requirement, but probably pointless regulation.

But why?

I doubt many native Britons have A level standard English.

If you actually read the details, it’s not all migrants, it’s those on highly skilled visas of various categories.

the standard is a practical English certification exam rather than the sort those who are native speakers learn

Good functional English, yes. A level standard- ridiculous.

I’ve experienced the rough end of this.

I had an encounter with a nurse who became very aggressive when I repeatedly failed to understand what she was asking me. I’m the most friendly and non-confrontational person you could meet, but after being shouted at and scolded for several minutes and reduced to tears before an Echo scan, I reluctantly decided to make a complaint. I was reluctant because a) I know the NHS has massive recruitment problems now and b) the obvious reason- I was afraid of being thought a racist (the nurse was from an African country).

But her behaviour was totally unprofessional. She hurried off in front of me when she could have walked beside me, did not look at me (so I couldn’t lip read) and gave instructions as I followed behind her. Her accent was impenetrable.I was apologetic about not understanding her but she absolutely went off on one as a result.

People need to be able to communicate clearly and understand what is said to them, otherwise they can’t do the job. Nobody has a translator with them all the time. Becomes more and more challenging as the jobs become more skilled.

The total cost for UK government and NHS translation and interpretation services is not published in a single figure, but available data from 2024-2025 indicates the Department for Work and Pensions spent an average of £8 million annually on benefit claimants and the police spent £19 million in 2022-2023. The Telegraph reported that the NHS has spent a total of £80 million on these services since 2020.

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)

The DWP spent an average of £8 million per year on interpreters for benefit claimants in 2023-2024, The Telegraph reported.
The DWP spent £27 million over the five years from 2019 to 2023 on interpreters.
National Health Service (NHS)

Since 2020, the NHS has spent £80 million on language and translation services for patients who do not speak English.
In the past five years, the NHS spent approximately £15.8 million annually on these services.
Other Public Sector Spending

In 2022-2023, the police across the UK spent a combined total of £19 million on translation and interpretation services, with the Metropolitan Police accounting for over £6 million of that total, The Telegraph reports.
Overall Trend

Overall, the public sector has awarded over 300 translation contracts worth £403 million in the past five years.

In the overall UK budget these figures are pretty small sums and much of the time necessary in order for services to do their jobs properly. BUT what they don't account for is the drain on the charity sectors that work alongside these services and also they remove the incentive to learn functional english. Should a person who has been in the country 10 years still be able to get paid for translation services? Does it benefit society to have ghettos that segregate people because they've never had to learn the language? I think in order to integrate society better I think these are problems we need to address.

I’m all for it. The amount of money we waste on translators for people in medical situations or legal situations is ridiculous.

I wonder how many of those 2,125 were actually German as well?

is that your opinion or do you have proof of the reading age? It was none of our business to judge what the students chose to read. At the time it was really hard to find age 11 level reading material aimed at adults and we needed some level to set the bar against..... It still might be, I don't know as I haven't been involved for years. No we didn't use it for lessons or tests. It was something that we, the helpers could look at to get a feel for where we needed to set the bar.

That's most care homes closing, then.

So because the standard of literacy amongst the existing population is poor, that means it’s fine to accept migrants who also have a poor grasp of English??

That truly is dumbing down. If I was emigrating to a country where English wasn’t the first language, I would fully expect to have to demonstrate that I could read, speak and write in the native language with a significant degree of proficiency. What’s more, I’m not sure why, as a migrant, I wouldn’t want to do that - how could I ever integrate and engage with society fully if I couldn’t speak the language?

Where you might have a point is that A Level standard may be too high - however, I’d need to understand what that standard was first before commenting. That said, there’s no way I could live and fully integrate in France with my GCSE French.

I passed GCSE French but I wouldn't have been able to cope living in France. I think this is fair enough tbh

I'm guessing English A Level for a non native speaker is going to be a different thing than that for a native speaker.

I bet you any money you like that if someone qualifies as a skilled immigrant and moves here with dependents that granny and grandad won’t have to have any English skills whatever…

I don't think it's A level English that people in England would sit (with English as their mother tongue).
It's the equivalent of having to speak French to (our) A level standard to emigrate to France. That seems fair enough. It's not generally considered a fluent enough level to work in a professional job in that language, which I think is a level or two above that.

Should read ‘can’..

Maybe that would come if schools weren’t over populated here, with too many people coming to the UK. Smaller class sizes would help strengthen education and give children more of a chance to actually receive adequate teaching and learning….

The Sun has a reading age of about 8. All the important words are in capitals as well. So it will be “SICK PERVERT stole woman’s KNICKERS”. Just to really hammer the message home.

and has been for many many years. In the late eighties I did some volunteering for the National Adult Literacy Scheme. In the training, we were told that in order to function in society, people needed to have the same literacy age, so reading AND writing, as an 11 year old child. Coincidentally, at the time this was the level of reading and compehension required to read the Sun newspaper. Of course many (most) of the people who used the service went further but that was the bar for us to achieve as helpers.

But I assume they can’t speak and understand English at least. Let’s be honest, people who can’t read are probably not going to be in jobs where they have to be customer facing anyway. More likely to be in manual low skilled work.