Blog: How to set up an EAL department in an international school

Trainer and subject expert, Tom Beakes, explores the practical steps and considerations for those who are setting up an EAL department in an international school.

Tom Beakes at The Bell Foundation — Tom Beakes,
Trainer 18 August 2025

Setting up a new EAL department or joining a new school as an EAL lead or coordinator can be a daunting task. Here are some practical steps and considerations for those who are setting up an EAL department:

1. Gather Information: Understand Your Context

Before making any decisions, start with an initial review or EAL audit to better understand your context. This could involve gathering information about:

The national and local context;

The linguistic profile of the student and staff body;

Cultural attitudes and expectations towards education;

Any national laws or regulations that apply to the teaching of languages;

School mission statements and policies: what does the school already say about language, inclusion, and diversity?

Staff capacity and confidence: survey staff about their expectations, challenges, and languages spoken;

Student and parent/carer voice: what do learners and families need and expect from EAL support?

If you can, use observations, learning walks, and informal conversations with colleagues to identify where there are strengths and gaps in provision and to identify allies.

2. Set Priorities and Create an Action Plan

Once you understand the context, decide what needs to be tackled first. You won't be able to do everything at once, so choose a few high-impact goals. Priorities will vary depending on the context.

Ask yourself:

What’s working well and what’s missing?

Where is support needed most urgently?

What resources (people, time, materials) do I need?

What’s realistic – in the short, medium, and long-term?

Create a working EAL Action Plan that includes:

Clear targets;

Named leads;

Realistic timelines;

Resources required;

Any practical or timetabling considerations.

For example, if Band A-B learners at secondary need better in-class support, your priorities might include scheduling TA support and delivering targeted TA training in Term 1.

Two Parents Representing Different Ethnical Group Talking To A Teacher With An Interpreter.

3. Establish Core Policies and Procedures

The next stage is creating clear processes and guidelines that are underpinned by guiding principles and ideas aligned with your school’s broader policies. Here are some key areas to think about:

Policies

Create or review and update your EAL or languages policy (see last year’s blog and webinar for details).

Contribute to other policy documents with an EAL lens e.g. admissions, teaching, and learning.

Consider how you will communicate your languages policy to all staff and share key messages with students and families.

Organisation of provision

What will be the balance of in-class and withdrawal support? If you are providing withdrawal support for learners who are new to English, try to ensure that:

Interventions are time-limited and impact is measurable.

Content is linked to the curriculum.

Learners don’t miss lessons that they can succeed in, e.g. music, P.E., other foreign languages.

Assessment

EAL Assessment is crucial as being able to understand and track your plurilingual learners’ English proficiency determines all other aspects of support.

You will need processes for the following areas:

1. Initial assessment

Create a placement test. There is no way EAL proficiency across the curriculum can be measured in a single test, so this is often a triangulation of general ability test scores (e.g. CAT4), English proficiency tests, and interview or observation data.

Write guidance for staff who will be doing the testing.

Create a learner profile template to capture key information on your EAL learners that can be kept, reviewed and updated by relevant staff.

2. Formative assessment

3. Summative assessment

You should also ensure you have a clear system for sharing key information such as grades, progress, and projected achievement with relevant staff and school leadership. For more detail on embedding EAL assessment see our webinar from December 2024 and our other guidance.

Recruitment

Create or update job descriptions with essential EAL competencies and qualifications.

Advocate for equitable hiring and inclusion of multilingual staff.

Onboarding and parent information

This involves creating information and process for new students and staff joining the EAL programme. This may include:

Student induction packs with details of the programme, student-friendly teacher profiles, lots of visuals to support comprehension and translations of key information;

Staff induction packs with organograms, programme details, CPD expectations, observations procedures and links to key documents and useful resources;

Setting-up a buddy system where existing EAL learners can support newly arrived students;

Information for parents including: a welcome email or letter, pathways for progression, exam and curriculum information, EAL testing and benchmarks, advice and guidance on settling into a new country, guidance on the importance of home language development.

Finally, create documentation to help you with day-to-day administration. This includes things like email templates, process-checklists, budget-tracking, and data summaries.

4. Embed, Monitor, and Develop Provision

With the core processes in place, you will need systems to maintain and develop what has been established. Here are some aspects to consider:

Accountability

Ensure there is clarity on who has responsibility for EAL at different levels across the school, including in senior leadership.

How is multilingualism or EAL represented at governance level?

How will you report upwards on progress and impact?

Quality Assurance

Systematic and embedded processes for measuring the impact of your EAL provision is critical. Ways to do this include:

Lesson observations – how are EAL learners supported across the school?

Curriculum evaluation – are the needs of EAL learners taken into account in curriculum and planning documentation?

Having clear expectations for EAL support within policies and staff handbooks;

Regularly analysing data on EAL learners for trends;

Collecting feedback from staff and students.

Professional Development

Think about how you can build expertise in EAL provision both across the school and within the EAL department. This could include:

Peer observations or peer coaching;

EAL-related INSET;

Providing opportunities for EAL specialists and mainstream teachers to collaborate in planning and teaching;
Identifying EAL ‘champions’ in different departments to spread effective practice.

Summary

Setting up an EAL department is not a one-off task. It is important not to expect to have all processes and systems in place immediately. Many aspects will take time and experimentation to embed and get right. The important thing to remember is that there is no such thing as ‘best practice’ when it comes to EAL provision – there is only what works in your school for your learners.