Multilingual School
Communication

The EAL communication gap in UK schools

Over 1.6 million pupils in English state schools speak English as an additional language — around 21% of the pupil population. In many urban schools, EAL pupils represent 40–60% of the roll, with families speaking dozens of different home languages.

Yet most school communication systems send every message in English only. For parents with limited English, this means emergency closures, safeguarding messages, appointment letters, and SEND review notices arrive in a language they cannot fully read. This is not just an engagement problem — for safeguarding-critical communications, it is a welfare risk.

The legal and regulatory context

Under the Equality Act 2010, schools have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to ensure all families can access information and services. While there is no absolute statutory requirement to translate every communication, failing to make information accessible to EAL families when doing so is technically feasible is difficult to justify.

Ofsted expects schools to demonstrate how they engage with all families. Schools with significant EAL populations that cannot evidence multilingual communication are vulnerable to inspection challenge. As one Ofsted report put it: "The school's communication is effective for English-speaking families but does not adequately reach the significant proportion of families for whom English is not the primary language."

For safeguarding, the bar is higher. Any communication related to a child's welfare must be understood by the parent. Relying on a child to translate safeguarding messages to their own parents is not an acceptable safeguarding practice.

How MySchoolUpdate handles multilingual communication

Automatic language detection

When a parent first engages with MySchoolUpdate — via push notification opt-in or the parent portal — their browser language is detected automatically. If the school has enabled their language, messages are delivered in that language from that point forward. No staff action required.

Per-parent language preferences

Preferred languages can also be set manually in the parent contact record. For families known to the school office, the admin team can designate "Polish" or "Somali" or "Arabic" for specific parents, overriding the auto-detection. This is particularly useful when setting up accounts for newly admitted families.

Neural machine translation

Translations are generated using professional-grade neural machine translation, significantly more accurate than first-generation machine translation tools. Schools can review translations before sending — or trust the translation and send immediately. For critical safeguarding messages, review is recommended.

Common languages in UK schools

Practical guidance: how to implement multilingual communication

• Audit your EAL population: Work with your SENCO and admin team to identify which home languages are present and which families are least confident in English
• Set language preferences during MIS sync: When MySchoolUpdate syncs with the MIS, use home language data (available in most MIS systems) to pre-populate language preferences
• Prioritise safeguarding and attendance communications: These have the highest stakes — enable multilingual delivery for these first
• Include a multilingual policy statement in your parent communication policy so it is documented for Ofsted purposes

Frequently asked questions