At Merton Infant School we provide a range of support to children and families with English as an additional language (EAL) and have achieved both the Bronze (May 2019) and Gold (May 2021) EAL Excellence Award. In May 2023 we re-validated our award at Gold level which we are incredibly proud of.

In school children are supported with their understanding of English within lessons through the use of EAL resources (word mats, talking tins, picture books etc.) and have additional adult support where required. Learning tasks are adapted to meet their individual needs, the same as for all of our children.

We engage with the Ethic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS) for children and families that require additional support either in school or within their local community. This could be through referrals for Bi-Lingual Assistants for individual children or through attendance at events run in school by EMTAS such as parent tea/coffee events. We are also able to request support from EMTAS for parents evening meetings where translation to your first language may be required.

We provide word mats to the children for all new topics to enable them to learn key vocabulary in their own language and in English to support with learning in school.

Don't forget that you can translate all of the information on our website into your first language by pressing the "select language" button on the home page. You can even translate it into the "Language of the half term" for fun if you would like to! - and yes -Swahili is on there!

We also host an English course run by EMTAS, in conjunction with the Junior School, on Friday mornings. Please contact the school office for further information on this or if you have anything that you think school can help you or your child with.