ABSTRACT
The pupils under discussion in this book are all bilingual. Much of the specific educational provision for such pupils in the UK, e.g. through the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant in England and Wales, is referred to by terms such as bilingual support. Are bilingual children in the UK therefore receiving bilingual education? Cazden and Snow (1990: 4) suggest that bilingual education is a simple label for a complex phenomenon. The range of educational responses to the needs of language minority children in the UK has been described in other chapters of this book. In the context used by many Anglo-American writers on the subject of bilingual education, the term suggests that two languages are used as the medium of instruction. However, most of the education received by language minority children in the UK is through the medium of English, the majority language, only.
