ABSTRACT
The issue of ‘race’ and multilingualism remains a sensitive area for many teachers. Over two hundred languages are spoken by children in British schools and the number of young bilingual speakers continues to rise, but these facts are rarely addressed by those who work within initial teacher education. At the same time, it is clear that underachievement (for a variety of reasons) is a recurring factor for many children from ethnic minority backgrounds (Gillborn and Gipps, 1996) and that much work needs to be done to create language teaching which adequately reflects the academic potential they possess.
