Bilingual children in the pre-school years

All the principles for early years education set out in the Early Learning Goals (QCA 1999) have important implications for practitioners working with bilingual children. For example, while the precept that no child should be disadvantaged ‘because of his or her race, culture, religion, home language’ (p. 5) will not be new to early years educators, the explicitness of the statement will lead many practitioners to review their provision. Similarly, the principle that within a carefully stuctured early years curriculum there should be ‘provision for the different starting points from which children develop their learning’ (p. 5) has particular significance for bilingual children.