Welcoming new EAL arrivals: 5 tips for a whole-school approach
EAL
Practical, evidence-informed strategies to help schools welcome EAL new arrivals, understand their individual needs and provide consistent support across the whole school.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Key Takeaways
A whole-school approach is essential for supporting EAL new arrivals, as they experience language learning throughout their entire school day.
Key strategies include shared training, clear induction processes, and creating a welcoming environment for EAL learners and their families.
Understanding each learner’s educational history aids in providing tailored support and ensuring access to the full curriculum for EAL new arrivals.
Utilising tools like FlashAcademy helps track language proficiency and supports teachers in planning effectively for multilingual learners.
High expectations and differentiated support can help EAL new arrivals thrive in a diverse educational setting.
Why a whole-school approach to EAL matters
Multilingualism in UK schools continues to grow. Department for Education data shows that over one in five pupils now speak a language other than English at home, and many schools now have more than forty languages represented across their classrooms.
The Education Policy Institute‘s most recent annual report shows that late-arriving pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) were 12.7 months behind their peers with English as a first language in 2025. Strand and Hessel’s analysis of local authority data found that English proficiency is around five times more powerful as a predictor of achievement than background factors such as gender or family income. This makes English proficiency a critial factor in learners’ educational outcomes.
Belonging matters just as much as proficiency. A 2024 meta-analysis by Uslu found a clear, positive relationship between a pupil’s sense of belonging and their academic achievement, on a par with the impact of curriculum and instruction.
EAL provision that supports the progression of English language proficiency needs a whole-school approach. Newly arrived EAL learners experience language learning across every part of the school day, not just within targeted EAL support. A consistent approach, from senior leadership and policy through to classroom practice and peer culture, helps ensure that responsibility for EAL provision is shared across the school and that learners receive consistent support wherever learning takes place.
We’ve pulled together five evidence-informed strategies to help you get there.
1. Build shared training and CPD across the whole school
Supporting new EAL arrivals cannot sit with one EAL lead working in isolation. Consistency depends on shared understanding across every member of staff who will teach or support that pupil.
Trauma-informed approaches. Many new arrivals will have experienced disrupted schooling, with some arriving as refugees or asylum seekers. It’s crucial that schools build an understanding of trauma into their approach to welcoming new EAL arrivals, rather than treating language support and pastoral support as separate strands.
Differentiated support. To ensure an inclusive environment for new arrivals, tailored support strategies and ongoing assessment are core components of EAL provision.
A consistent approach across trusts and school groups. Sharing good practice and regular communication across EAL networks means multi-academy trusts (MATs) can ensure multilingual learners receive a similar, high level of support.
2. Create clear induction processes for new EAL arrivals
Complete a pupil profile with the family. A welcome profile completed with parents or carers helps establish language and educational background, identifies gaps in prior provision, and surfaces any additional needs early, so the whole staff team is working from the same information rather than piecing it together over weeks.
Learn their name, and how to say it properly. This sounds small, but it is fundamental in making a new pupil feel recognised from day one.
Introduce a language buddy on day one. Pairing a new arrival with a peer, ideally one who shares a first language, gives them an immediate point of support during transitions and unstructured time.
Translate the essentials. Information packs covering the basics of the school day, in the family’s home language where possible, reduce the early anxiety that comes from simply not knowing what happens next.
3. Create a welcoming environment for EAL learner and families
Visual displays and representation. Using texts, displays and resources that reflect diverse cultures, names and experiences helps new arrivals see themselves represented in the school, which research links directly to a stronger sense of belonging. Our CEO, Veejay Lingiah discusses this more in his blog, EAL learners and the power of belonging.
Dual coding. Pairing images with text supports comprehension for learners who are still building English vocabulary, supporting their introduction to the new environment.
A language board that includes home languages. Displaying the languages spoken across the school, rather than only English, sends a clear message about which languages are valued.
4. Understand each learner’s educational history and English proficiency
New arrivals are a highly diverse group and treating them as a single category risks missing what each individual pupil actually needs.
Ask about previous schooling. A pupil’s prior experience of education, including whether they were taught in a mixed-gender setting, what subjects they studied and in which language, has a direct bearing on how they will experience a UK classroom, and this information should be passed on to subject teachers rather than held only by the EAL.
Check for pre-existing SEND or literacy needs. Language acquisition and additional learning needs can look similar on the surface, so this needs careful, separate assessment rather than assumption. Our guide to identifying SEND in multilingual learners explores how schools can distinguish between language acquisition and potential addtional needs.
Assess English language proficiency early. A DfE-aligned baseline covering listening, speaking, reading and writing, gives staff an accurate, shared starting point rather than relying on informal impressions in the first weeks.
5. Ensure new arrivals can access the full curriculum
The endpoint of a whole-school approach is that new arrivals are not held back from the curriculum while they build their English.
Keep expectations high. Multilingualism should be harnessed as a strength for EAL learners, who experience a range of benefits from learning additional languages. Understanding the benefits of home language, bilingualism and translanguaging can help inform planning, rather than defaulting to simplified content that under-challenges pupils while their English proficiency develops.
Differentiate rather than dilute. A whole-school approach means every subject teacher, not only the EAL lead, adjusts delivery so that new arrivals can engage with the same curriculum as their peers. These could include scaffolding EAL learners with bilingual glossaries to support subject-specific vocabulary.
Support translanguaging. Allowing pupils to use their full linguistic repertoire, including their home language, to process and demonstrate understanding is shown to help learners engage with more complex concepts and build confidence, rather than treating the use of a first language in class as something to be discouraged.
How FlashAcademy supports newly arrived EAL learners
Every one of the strategies above depends on schools having the right information about a learner, at the right time, shared across the whole staff team rather than held by one person. This is where FlashAcademy® can be particularly beneficial for new arrivals.
A short and easy-to-set English language proficiency assessment establishes each learner’s baseline in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Their A-to-E graded result is visible via a teacher dashboard, so every member of staff working with that student can see their starting point. Induction information gathered on day one stays with the learner throughout their learning journey.
The home language interface in the learning app can be set in 48 languages, providing familiarity as they integrate into school life and supporting translanguaging. Schools using FlashAcademy® see 45% of EAL learners progress by at least one proficiency grade a year, against a national average of 18%, giving learners the foundation to build on for academic success.
This supports the whole-school approach to provision for new EAL arrivals, providing a clear starting point and evidence of progress.
Start with a baseline assessment covering all four key skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Aligning this to the DfE’s A–E English proficiency bands gives you a consistent, shareable measure of where a learner is starting from, and a clear basis for planning support for new arrivals and re-assessing over time.
Ongoing, structured re-assessment is key, alongside a central place, such as a teacher dashboard, where every member of staff can track learner progress rather than this information sitting with one EAL lead. This also builds the evidence base schools need for EAL and Ofsted, which now expects schools to identify EAL learners and demonstrate how provision supports their progress over time.
New arrivals can log in from day one and complete an adaptive digital English proficiency assessment covering listening, speaking, reading and writing. AI-assisted marking reviews their responses against DfE A–E proficiency bands to generate a clear baseline, which teachers can review and amend before confirming the grade. The assessment can then be set as many times as possible for ongoing progress tracking.
