Othering through language: English as an Additional Language in England’s educational policy and practice

About one-fifth of the total school population in England was recorded as having English as an Additional Language (EAL) in 2018. This paper reflects on the problems presented by the lack of a comprehensive national strategy and guidance for EAL provision, support, and training, and how these issues reveal the existence of ethnocentrism within educational policy and practice in England. The findings are based on interviews with educational staff and participant observation in schools conducted in three schools in Manchester, UK between December 2019 and February 2020 as part of the Horizon 2020 MiCREATE project. The authors question whether categorizing multilingual pupils in opposition to monolingual English speakers serves any practical purpose or merely ‘others’ these children, and they call for broader recognition of multilingualism within the national curriculum and educational practice.