Whole school approach to EAL in schools

Schools and settings should have a separate EAL or language policy. This is an effective way of making a clear statement of your commitment to welcoming new arrivals with EAL and ensuring that they have the support to reach their full potential.

Your EAL policy should:

• Detail your approach to welcoming new CYP with EAL, your use of interpretation services, use of EAL assessment frameworks and should communicate your understanding of trauma in relation to EAL CYP.
• Support consistency of provision, of interpretation, assessment and support for CYP with EAL.

This model EAL policy (Word doc) [285KB] can be downloaded and adapted to suit your practices and procedures.

An anti-racism policy sets out your commitment to developing a curriculum and environment that supports all CYP and staff. Guidance on developing a policy is available from the Anna Freud website.  Schools and settings should also have robust policies and procedures in place for responding to and reporting prejudice-based incidents. More information is available in this One Minute Guide: Prejudice-based incidents.

Your safeguarding policy should make clear that professional interpretation services will be used when discussing issues of safeguarding with a CYP or families/carers.

There will be several other policies that relate to teaching, learning and well-being of CYP with EAL. There is a statutory obligation under the Equality Act (2010) to promote equality of opportunity for CYP whatever their race, religion or belief as well as other protected characteristics. This should be clearly stated in the inclusion policy.