Burrendah Primary School has a culturally and linguistically diverse school community. There are over 44 different languages spoken by our students and their families. We recognise this wonderfully rich cultural and linguistic diversity and take every opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate this.

In order to address this linguistic diversity, our school provides comprehensive English support for students who are new to the country or Australian born but speak a language other than English at home. The program caters for students from Pre-Primary to Year 6, with a focus on oral and written competence in Standard Australian English. The English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) teachers collaborate with classroom teachers to ensure that our EAL/D students can access the curriculum in order to reach their full potential. Support is delivered in a variety of ways: in class support, small group withdrawal or 1:1 support when required. We have a wide variety of resources that can be borrowed by our students and parents to practise their English skills at home. At times new arrivals to Australia need to attend the Intensive English Centre at Beaconsfield Primary School for a period of one year if they are new to working in English speaking environment.

We also support parents of our EAL/D students, enabling them to fully engage in their child’s education within their new school community. We run informal EAL/D Parent Network meetings three times per term; Covid 19 protocols permitting. We encourage all parents to participate as leaders in learning through our “culture club’ program”.

The content is planned and delivered by the parents with the support of the EAL/D team. These fun and informative parent led sessions, feature one country and its culture per term, from Term 2, (Covid protocols permitting). This unique cultural program has been running at Burrendah Primary School since 2014.

We encourage all our bi-lingual and multi- lingual families to maintain their first language and cultural traditions as this forms an important part of our students’ identity. We demonstrate our respect for each other by learning about our different cultures and customs through a number of curriculum areas. 

EALD Program Flyer - please click HERE

Useful websites:    

Bilingual Families Perth                                       

7 Challenges and Solutions for Raising a Bilingual Child

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