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Guest blog by Stavroula Petropoulou.
Stavroula Petropoulou is Regional Head of Multilingualism at International Schools Partnership (ISP), specialising in multilingual education, inclusion and SEND. With experience spanning educational psychology, SEND coordination and school leadership, she works with schools worldwide to improve outcomes for multilingual learners.
There is a child in a classroom right now not speaking much, understanding some of what is said but rarely volunteering answers. If they do respond, it’s with only a few words or a gesture.
They struggle to follow multi-step instructions and their written work is sparse. They are not accessing the curriculum, leaving their teacher worried about the next steps.
They arrived last term with limited English.
In the latest pupil progress meeting, the teacher is asked why this student isn’t making progress. The teacher explains that the work is differentiated to their level but despite this, they are still not achieving as hoped, and their disengagement is beginning to affect others around them. The recommendation is to refer to the SENDCO for further investigation.
Does this sound familiar?
This is not a hypothetical scenario. It is happening in classrooms every day. And schools need to quickly decide: is this child a multilingual learner still finding their footing in English? Or do they have a learning difficulty that has nothing to do with language acquisition?
Language acquisition vs learning difficulty is a valid, consequential – and very often mishandled – challenge.
Multilingualism and SEND misidentification can have a considerable impact. Misidentification in one direction means a child spends years carrying a Special Educational Needs label they don’t have whilst accessing the wrong type of support. Misidentification in the other can mean a child’s genuine learning difficulty is written off as “just language learning needs” while the window for early intervention quickly closes with lasting consequences for their access to the right support.
Both errors shape a school’s culture and systems – and its response to every similar case that follows.
Multilingualism and SEND misidentification can happen for many reasons. It can be a combination of structural pressures, systemic gaps and limited professional training: none of which reflects badly on individuals who are simply doing the best they can with what they have.
The presenting behaviours can look almost identical, whether you are looking at English language acquisition or an unidentified learning need:
Without a framework or robust training for distinguishing between multilingualism and SEND, professionals reach for the lens they know best, and most have been trained in one area, not both.
The reality is that multilingualism often sits in a policy vacuum. In a UK context, it is not embedded within key training programmes and qualification frameworks. In both UK and international schools, the resources available to those leading on multilingualism are variable. I am fortunate to work for ISP who have a comprehensive and rigorous approach to supporting multilingual learners, but I know this is not the reality for every school.
The result is professionals trying to do right by a child with limited tools, resources and knowledge for a job that requires expertise, not patchy responses.
Many of us work in educational systems where progress is measured in numbers, performance in tick-boxes and difficulties in labels. When a child doesn’t fit the expected mould, a label is often given.
This has its merits too as identification can lead to genuinely life-changing support. SEND referrals open pathways to resources, targeted provision and personalised support. However, multilingual status does not trigger the same level of investigation or resourcing. And that imbalance, however unconsciously, can tip professionals towards naming a difficulty rather than investigating a developmental stage.
The assessment problem sits at the heart of all of this. Most standardised tools used in SEND identification, such as cognitive assessments, language batteries and processing tasks, were designed with monolingual English-speaking populations in mind.
A multilingual child can consistently perform below norms on language-heavy tasks for reasons that are often entirely unrelated to cognitive capacity or learning difficulty. These tools, when used as primary evidence for SEND in a child who is still acquiring English, are not fit for purpose.
There is a structural issue that rarely gets named directly: identifying SEND in multilingual learners requires expertise in both language acquisition and learning differences, yet these areas sit in different professional domains.
When students’ needs require assessment, schools may seek advice from educational psychologists, speech and language therapists or other external agencies. Each brings valuable expertise to the table. However, we cannot assume that all professionals will have specialist knowledge in both language acquisition and SEND identification.
The education system has traditionally treated multilingualism and special educational needs as separate fields of practice. As a result, schools are often left to piece together evidence from different specialists, each viewing the child through their own professional lens.
I have seen cases first-hand where schools have struggled to access clear guidance or get straightforward answers because professionals are understandably cautious about drawing conclusions while a child is still learning English. As we discussed earlier, many standardised assessments were not developed with multilingual learners in mind.
Administering assessments and interpreting data when language proficiency is still developing is complex and professional caution is appropriate. However, it can also leave schools uncertain about how best to proceed.
What is ultimately needed is stronger collaboration between different disciplines rather than over-reliance on any single professional perspective. Robust Assess – Plan – Do review cycles informed by both multilingualism and SEND experts remain one of the most effective ways schools can build a fuller picture of a child’s needs over time.
In 1979, researcher Jim Cummins identified a distinction that should be foundational knowledge for every professional working with multilingual learners: the difference between Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP).
BICS is the language of the playground: conversational, social, context rich. Most children develop functional conversational fluency in a new language within one to two years. CALP is the language of the curriculum- abstract and academically demanding. This takes five to seven years to reach a level comparable with monolingual peers.
It’s easy to observe a child chatting with their friends at lunch and draw conclusions that their English is fine. However, social fluency and academic language proficiency are not the same thing, which is frequently where misidentification can occur.
Strand, Lindsay and Pather’s analysis of the 2005 Pupil Level Annual School Census, covering 6.5 million pupils in maintained schools, found clear evidence of over and under-representation of minority ethnic groups across the SEND categories. Multilingual status is strongly linked with identification for speech, language and communication needs. Interestingly, the same research shows that as children’s English fluency develops, many of those identified needs simply disappear.
And this raises a very important question: were those children correctly identified in the first place?
The most important principle is that SEND difficulties will present across languages and contexts. If a child is struggling only in the language they are acquiring, this could primarily be an acquisition issue rather than a SEND issue. This means practitioners need to:
The ideal scenario is a team that includes specialist knowledge in both language acquisition and multilingual development, whether that consists of specialists working in tandem or one individual who has robust expertise in both areas. ELT well brings together good practice guidance for supporting neurodivergent language learners, and this can usefully sit alongside The Bell Foundation’s resources for schools working with multilingual learners who may also have SEND.
A multilingual learner who is labelled with a difficulty they do not have, learns over time that the system sees them as less capable or even worse, that there is something wrong with them.
The child whose special educational needs and disabilities went unrecognised because it was assumed they were still learning English reaches secondary education or adulthood without the support that could have made a huge difference to their ability to reach their full potential.
My experience in working with both multilingual learners, those with SEND, and those with both, has shown me that we need to continually improve and ask ourselves where we can improve processes.
I would start with, have we given this child what they truly need?
At International Schools Partnership, we are committed to ensuring that this question -and the answer- sit at the heart of everything we do.
One of the structural strengths across our schools is that we have dedicated Multilingualism leads alongside Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENDCOs). This means that when a question arises regarding whether a students’ difficulties are part of the language acquisition process or the result of an underlying educational need, there are experts in place who can work alongside one another to look at the bigger picture. This way, we ensure our judgement is not left to a single lens.
Our approach to tracking language development is underpinned by robust multilingualism pathways that set clear expectations for how students progress through each stage of targeted, tiered language support. Students have personalised targets which are shared with parents and reviewed regularly with both their class teacher and the Multilingualism lead. This creates a consistent foundation for tracking progress over time and when a child is not progressing as expected despite intensive and targeted support provided, the reasons for that must be further explored.
Schools use FlashAcademy® for baseline assessment and ongoing tracking, providing objective, language proficiency data triangulated with classroom observations and teacher judgement. Approaches across schools vary depending on their unique contexts; however, this shared commitment to evidence-based practice and decision-making means that no child should slip through the cracks.
Stavroula Petropoulou is an international specialist in multilingualism, inclusion and special educational needs, with a professional background spanning primary and secondary education, educational psychology and SEND coordination.
Having held leadership roles in the UK and Malaysia, she brings extensive experience in multilingual provision, strategic planning, teacher training and inclusive education. In her current role as Head of Multilingualism – Malaysia, she works with schools across the ISPnetwork to strengthen multilingual education and develop evidence-informed approaches that improve outcomes for multilingual learners.
Stavroula is passionate about equitable access to learning and believes that linguistic and cultural diversity is a strength that enables all students to thrive.
