From November 2025, Ofsted will look more closely at how schools recognise and support learners at the early stages of learning English as an additional language. The new ‘State-funded school inspection toolkit’ (Ofsted, 2025, page 20) makes it absolutely clear that EAL provision is about unlocking multilingual potential.
Learning Village, AssessEP and our EAL and Multilingual Framework Process provide simple solutions to enable you to meet all the requirements.
The recently updated toolkit (linked above) outlines what support and provision Ofsted inspectors expect to see for pupils at the early stages of learning English as an additional language:
- ‘leaders and teachers recognise that these pupils already speak at least one language, and do not lower their expectations of them’
How we support this: Learning Village provides scaffolded and editable printable resources to which translation can be added in more than 100 languages to support the link with the home language. Learners have the option to translate words and language phrases in the gamified learning environment by clicking on a word/phrase to see the written translation and listen to the audio.
- ‘teachers assess pupils’ English language proficiency accurately and regularly’
How we support this: AssessEP provides summative and formative assessments to track progress in the different language skills, i.e. reading, writing, listening, and speaking, with levels aligned to other EAL frameworks such as BELL, CEFR, and NASSEA.
- ‘teachers recognise that providing opportunities for pupils to talk with staff and peers during lessons is particularly important; teachers help pupils articulate what they know and understand by scaffolding, modelling, extending and developing their ideas’
How we support this: Learning Village has embedded opportunities for speaking and listening in the readily created online lessons along with a dedicated demonstration area for staff to activate prior knowledge and model new language structures to learners. The scaffolded printable resources are editable and offer various practice activities - from speaking and listening right through to reading and writing - such as gap-fill exercise, scramble, add the missing punctuation, snakes and ladders, labelling and matching, and word order.
- ‘teachers focus on the vocabulary pupils need, including subject-specific vocabulary, to help them understand new concepts; they keep explanations clear and precise’
How we support this: Learning Village has a dedicated Curriculum Learning Journey with lessons covering a range of subject-specific and academic vocabulary from different topics and subjects which are taught in language patterns, e.g. All cells have cytoplasms. All cells have nuclei. This supports building up a bank of new and useful language to better access any new concepts in the curriculum.
- ‘teachers develop and extend pupils’ language carefully and deliberately, with plenty of repetition’
How we support this: Learning Village lessons provide opportunities for repetition and revision of the taught and learnt language in a variety of ways, e.g. memory games, word order, spelling, and matching.
- ‘teachers ensure that pupils learn to read using systematic synthetic phonics as soon as possible, so that they have access to a wide range of literature that will accelerate their understanding of English’
How we support this: Learning Village has a dedicated Phonics and Spelling learning journey covering, for example, initial sounds, digraphs, trigraphs, CVC words, the first 2000 high-frequency words, contractions, prefixes, and suffixes.
Abstract from: State-funded School Inspection Toolkit (updated 9 September 2025). Published by the UK Department for Education/Ofsted.
What do the new requirements mean for schools?
A successful EAL provision under this new framework will depend on how consistently and efficiently these principles are embedded across the curriculum. Schools will need to:
- Integrate regular proficiency assessments into their planning cycle to ensure accurate placement and ongoing progress tracking.
- Design lessons around purposeful discussions, scaffolding, and modelling.
- Teach and revisit vocabulary across subjects.
- Provide early phonics teaching for new-to-English learners, even in upper year groups.
- Plan deliberate language development - not just exposure - across the school.
In addition to helping you meet the EAL requirements, we can also support you in meeting the following Inclusion requirements (Ofsted, 2025, page 10):
- ‘Using the information from the assessment of pupils’ needs to implement a continuous cycle of planning, actions and review in order to reduce barriers to pupils’ learning and/or wellbeing’
- ‘Involving specialists when necessary to support pupils’ development’
How can we help?
Learning Village directly supports these expectations through its visual, scaffolded, readily-created online lessons that build vocabulary, phonics, and sentence structure step by step. The learning programme provides the tools that teachers need to assess proficiency, model language, and give learners structured opportunities to talk and practise English in context.
AssessEP enables schools to assess, record, and track learners’ English language proficiency over time with online reading and listening assessments, offline speaking and writing assessments, automated results and levels aligned to EAL frameworks such as BELL and CEFR.
The EAL and Multilingual Framework Process (Virtual Consultancy) helps schools develop whole-school EAL strategies. It supports school leaders to audit, plan, and embed effective EAL practice and provision to ensure consistency and a holistic EAL approach with flexible resources across a school.
Get in touch if you would like to learn more about how we can help you, your school, and your EAL learners: info@axcultures.com
References
Department for Education & Ofsted (2025) State-funded school inspection toolkit. London: Department for Education. Updated September 2025.
