Bilingual children in Irish classrooms: what teachers actually see

Walk into an Irish primary classroom and you will hear, behind the English, a dozen home languages — Ukrainian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic and more. The 2022 Census counted three quarters of a million people in Ireland who speak a language other than English or Irish at home. The children of those households are in school now.

The gap teachers describe

The teachers we interviewed were not short of goodwill toward their EAL pupils — quite the opposite. What they were short of was material: content that meets a child who is bright, capable, and simply new to English, without treating them as a younger learner or handing them something aimed at nobody in particular.

A worksheet translated by a machine is not the same thing as material that works in two languages. And a child who cannot yet read English fluently is often locked out of the very subject content — maths, science, everything — that has nothing to do with English at all.

The home language is an asset, not an obstacle

The research on bilingual learning is unambiguous: a strong home language helps, not hinders. A child who understands a concept in Ukrainian can attach the English word to something solid. A parent who can practise with their child in the language they share at home is a teaching resource no school can replace — if the material lets them.

That last part is the catch. Most materials don't. The parent is willing; the worksheet is monolingual.

What bilingual-by-design means

We build every Tuto activity to switch its language — the same flashcards, the same matching game, in English at school and Ukrainian or Polish at the kitchen table, with built-in audio so a child who cannot read yet can still hear and learn. Not translation as an afterthought: the same activity, living in both of the child's languages.

If you teach EAL children, or you are raising a bilingual child in Ireland, your experience of what actually works is exactly what we want to learn from — tell us.