The last two years have been like no other with the pandemic forcing schools to close for many children for months at a time. For learners using EAL 2020 and early 2021 were particularly challenging as many were disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic:
The Foundation responded to the needs of EAL learners by supporting teachers, parents, and pupils with home learning through a series of guidance documents, articles, videos, webinars and resources. A key priority for the Foundation, both during and beyond the pandemic, has been to equip schools with the skills, expertise and resources needed to help them embed an accessible, high quality, and ambitious curriculum in which every EAL learner is given the opportunity to thrive.
To ensure teachers can access the support they need, the Foundation offers a webinar series, online training, as well as a wealth of free resources.
Online Training: Our online courses are designed to work around the busy lives of teachers. Each course aims to develop the expertise and confidence of school staff so they can provide even more impactful support for learners who use EAL. Upcoming courses can be found on the Training and Events page.
Free webinar series: Our free EAL webinars provide direct access to expertise in EAL to senior leaders and EAL staff in school, policymakers, Local Authority teams, teacher educators and academics.
Previous webinars can be found on the Foundation’s YouTube channel. Upcoming webinars can be found on our Training and Events page.
Free Resources: Our EAL resources provide school staff with free, tried and tested, curriculum-based classroom resources and teaching strategies to help plan and deliver lessons that ensure the curriculum is accessible to, and supportive of, learners using EAL.
Translated guidance (available in 19 languages) provides information for parents about the Education system in England, how they can get involved in school life and what they can do to help their child to learn. Access this guidance on our Parental Involvement page.
EAL Assessment: The Foundation’s assessment tools are straightforward, easy-to-use, and have been designed with busy teachers in mind. They can be used to gather data to support the teaching and learning of learners who use EAL and to enable teachers to generate targets to guide progress.
To access the full suite of assessment resources visit the EAL Assessment page.
Initial Teacher Training: Following research with the University of Edinburgh, we developed evidence-informed, free to download teaching materials for ITT providers with a focus on preparing student teachers to work in diverse multilingual classrooms.
Request access to the modules via our ITT page.
“Excellent, relevant and thought-provoking CPD from experts in their field. I am delighted that these seminars can be made available for free, as this is a great help to practitioners who lack a training budget.”
“I am truly grateful for all the free evidence-based resources that you have made available for Teachers across the world to use. … I am having to build systems from scratch so the framework has really helped me to think strategically about EAL provision and assessment across the whole school.”
EAL Journal 