ReadingWise's new EAL features explained
19 June 2026
ReadingWise has launched a suite of new EAL features designed to support pupils at the early stages of learning English.
England's classrooms are changing fast. There are now 1.7 million EAL pupils in English schools, more than triple the number in 1997, and representing 21% of all pupils today. Over 9% of pupils in Scotland are EAL. Two in three schools have at least 5% EAL learners on their roll.
Yet according to The Bell Foundation, developing academic proficiency in English can take over six years, and proficiency explains four to six times as much variation in attainment as ethnicity, gender and free school meals combined. For pupils arriving later in their school journey, the challenge is even steeper. EAL learners joining in Year 6 are half as likely as their monolingual peers to reach the national average.
The stakes are rising too: as of October 2025, Ofsted's updated inspection toolkit now includes a dedicated section on EAL within the Curriculum and Teaching evaluation area, meaning inspectors are explicitly asked to consider how schools support pupils at the early stages of learning English. The need for targeted, effective support has never been greater.