It’s well known that there has been a “major shift” in the student demographics of international schools, as Janelle Torres of ISC Research puts it.
A decade ago, international schools mostly served expatriate families with English-speaking backgrounds; now, “a growing proportion of the student body” is made up of local students.
“In some markets they account for over 70 per cent of total enrolment,” adds Torres, who is research manager for South East Asia at ISC Research.
An issue that the sector has been learning to grapple with more recently, however, is that EAL students’ language profiles have also become more complex and diverse.
Shifting understanding of EAL students
Such changes were recognised by both Jacob Huckle, head of multilingual learning at Dulwich College Suzhou, in China, and Gemma Donovan, head of English as an additional language (EAL) at South View School Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
There used to be a shared understanding of what an EAL student was, but that has “shifted and changed”. Now, students are coming from “a wide range of backgrounds”.
For example, a student’s home language might be Korean, but that does not necessarily mean they can read or write in that language or use it for academic purposes. Other students might have no clear first language or home language, but two or more second languages.
“Some schools are talking about ‘identity language’ rather than ‘first language’,” says Huckle. “There are many students who have different languages that are important to their identity, regardless of how proficient they are.”
Torres, Huckle and Donovan were discussing the changing demographics of international schools - and the challenges and opportunities this brings - at an ISC Research webinar last week, organised following publication of the ISC Research white paper Meeting the Challenges of Shifting Student Demographics: EAL provision in international schools.
Huckle and Donovan both argue - as a result of the growing number of students with English as a second language - that EAL can no longer be seen as the responsibility of one department or a set of specific staff and teachers.
There is still value in EAL driven by specialist staff, says Huckle, but he adds an important caveat: “These models are not enough to meet the diverse needs of our multilingual learners, our EAL learners.
“So we need to shift away from those kinds of approaches to a more joined-up, whole-school approach, in which everyone in the school takes shared responsibility for the language development of all students.”
Multilingual talents
Part of the challenge is about seeing multilingualism as an asset, not a problem. This is the thinking behind a “young interpreter scheme” that has helped make visible the range of languages spoken at South View School and celebrated students’ multilingual talents.
There are 89 nationalities represented in the student population and, when the young interpreter scheme began in August 2024, 50 secondary students arrived at Donovan’s door to volunteer, all keen to show off their linguistic prowess and help new students settle in.
“It was just so heartwarming to see,” says Donovan.
Schemes as this have a good chance of continuing to thrive when staff move on; they can be “built on” and lead to “longer-term change”, suggests Huckle.
Even more so if, more generally, multilingualism becomes part of the fabric of a school, like at Dulwich College Suzhou.
There, every faculty-improvement plan has a goal relating to language development or multilingual learning, says Huckle. Lesson-observation frameworks, meanwhile, have sections relating to EAL strategies and language development across the curriculum.
Professional development key to EAL
Of course, professional development for staff is key. However, before trying to improve teachers’ skills, Huckle emphasises that it is important to win “hearts and minds”.
Previously, he focused on “loads of strategies, tips and advice” to support staff - but found that, while teachers “loved them”, they rarely put them into practice in lessons.
It is crucial, therefore, to help teachers “develop more empathy with their EAL students”.
Huckle adds: “There are lots of things we can do, but I think the most fundamental one is to help teachers undergo that shift in their thinking - to accept this kind of shared responsibility, and then support them with skilling up and training.”
Huckle encourages teachers to see language learning not as an extra responsibility, but as essential if they want to be the best teacher for their students.
In secondary schools, for example, both Huckle and Donovan talk about working with specific departments to make explicit the vocabulary students need to excel in that particular curricular area.
Huckle says: “As a mathematician, as a scientist, as a geographer, what are the language demands of your curriculum? How do geographers communicate and how can you scaffold that through the curriculum? I think that’s an important shift for teachers at secondary level - to embed the language.”
More broadly, Huckle says that introducing “translanguaging pedagogies” - which encourage EAL learners to use their full linguistic repertoire - has helped teachers in his school “get creative” and “use students’ other languages to support and extend the learning”.
Donovan, meanwhile, talks about dual coding and making use of technology. Quizlet digital flashcards can help build vocabulary, she says, while Huckle talks of teachers using artificial intelligence to “differentiate and personalise” learning, including simplification of texts to pitch them at the right level of English for each student.
Power of working with teaching peers
Giving teachers opportunities to show colleagues what has worked can also be powerful.
“When you hear it from a peer, sometimes it can be more impactful,” says Donovan.
However, success is not just about classroom practitioners; school leaders also have a role to play, and sometimes they have to overcome the biases of parents.
If a family is sending their child to an international school to learn English, for example, they do not always welcome hearing other languages spoken in the corridors.
Huckle says it is important to share information about the school’s approach to multilingualism up front. That way, there is “clarity” about what the school wants to achieve and parents can “buy into that” and “see that value”.
School leaders have a responsibility, says Huckle, to “develop their own skillset” and understand how languages are acquired. Ideally, they should also be adding to their own linguistic skills.
“Even a few words of greeting in the different languages - that’s the kind of thing leaders should be doing in their schools,” he says.
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