ABSTRACT
The Distinctiveness of English as an Additional Language: A Cross-curriculum Discipline (Working Paper 5), edited by Hugh South, was published in 1999 by the National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum (NALDIC). NALDIC is the principal professional association for teachers concerned with English as an additional language (EAL). The paper correctly states that in the year of its publication there were ‘more than 500,000 bilingual pupils in the school population’. Much more recent figures compiled by NALDIC show that in 2015:
There are more than a million children between 5 and 16 years old in UK schools who speak in excess of 360 languages between them in addition to English. Currently there are 1,061,010 bilingual 5–16 year olds in English schools, 29,532 in Scotland, 10,357 ‘newcomer’ pupils in Northern Ireland and 31,132 EAL learners in Wales. So the number of EAL learners in UK schools doubled between 1999 and 2014, and is likely to continue to grow.
(NALDIC, 2015)