The Bell Foundation is proud to celebrate reaching 10 Centres of Expertise across the country. In 2025, our partners delivered EAL training to 2,425 professionals ranging from senior leaders through to support staff, and they are well on their way to reach even more in 2026. Each Centre of Expertise works to support schools in its region to embed impactful and sustainable EAL provision and develop inclusive practices.
To mark the occasion, we spoke with Emma Dobson, Director of Exceed Teaching School Hub in Bradford, who reflects on their partnership with the Foundation and the importance of supporting teachers to work with EAL learners.
Set the scene for us – could you tell us about your trust and the local community that you serve?
Exceed is a multi-academy trust that sits in the heart of the culturally rich and diverse city of Bradford. As a teaching school hub, we deliver the Early Career Teacher (ECT) entitlement to over 500 ECTs each year, train approximately 90 primary and 25 secondary school teachers annually, and offer the full suite of National Professional Qualifications (NPQs). Our programs draw upon the extensive expertise within the city and are tailored to the context and needs of our local schools.
Our aim is to impact positively on the communities that we serve through driving system wide improvement, and to improve outcomes and life chances for all learners. Many of our schools have around 95% pupils who use English as an Additional Language (EAL) on the school roll. We have partnered with The Bell Foundation to become a Centre of Expertise that helps develop the expertise of our high-quality teachers who are already doing exceptional work with the many multilingual learners in our schools.
What has your EAL journey looked like since partnering with The Bell Foundation?
Up until 2025, there was no EAL school-based training provision in the north of England. In the absence of any national guidance or policy, we decided to partner with The Bell Foundation to help strengthen our work across the trust.
As a Centre of Expertise, we are not only raising the bar, but also the profile of quality EAL provision that is delivered in and around Bradford.
Training some of our staff as Bell Foundation Lead Practitioners (BFLPs) has enriched our teaching development opportunities, and having access to more evidence-based teaching resources has been a game changer for our teacher educators who may not have had EAL expertise previously.
How can a Centre of Expertise support teachers in the classroom?
Being a Centre of Expertise has helped us to raise the profile of different EAL strategies in the classroom, such as adaptive teaching and oracy. We are also now better placed to align school improvement plans, curriculum design, and Professional Development to focus on our schools’ provision for EAL learners.
Inclusion is a national priority and a system-wide challenge, not one confined to a single trust. At Exceed MAT, inclusion is a strategic driver that sits at the heart of our vision and values. We are committed to developing evidence-informed practice that ensures equity and excellence for all learners. The pedagogical approaches and research developed by The Bell Foundation have relevance far beyond EAL provision; they strengthen high-quality teaching and learning for every pupil, supporting us to build inclusive classrooms where all children can thrive.
What difference are you making as a Centre of Expertise?
Effective EAL practice requires a secure understanding of the nuance and diversity within EAL cohorts. Schools must recognise the distinction between learners who use EAL but are already proficient in English and those who are newly arrived and acquiring the language from the outset. The materials have strengthened our adaptive teaching approaches by deepening teachers’ understanding of language acquisition and enabling more precise scaffolding, modelling and questioning. As a result, provision for EAL learners has improved, alongside more responsive and inclusive practice for all pupils.
A key area of development for us has been strengthening our approach to assessing English language proficiency. There remains a lack of clear national direction on how this should be implemented in schools. Through engagement with The Bell Foundation’s EAL Assessment Framework, our schools have begun reviewing their capacity to assess pupils within priority proficiency bands more systematically.
This work is helping us to identify and address potential barriers that some EAL learners may face when trying to access the curriculum, for example understanding the technical language used in subjects such as science. Our next step is to extend this work by encouraging and supporting other local schools to develop robust EAL assessment practices, ensuring that more learners receive the targeted support they need to thrive.
Is your organisation interested in joining our team of licensed partners?
The Bell Foundation is currently calling for new partners to join its network of licensed practitioners running EAL training in their regions. With the inclusion of EAL in the Ofsted inspection toolkit, our partners are seeing an increase in requests for training. We are looking to expand our network of licensed practitioners to meet that need.
