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This project is the first comparative sociolinguistic investigation of multilingual practices in complementary schools in Britain. The focus is to investigate how complementary schools extend or restrict the performance of young people’s multilingual repertoires. The ethno-linguistic groups concerned are Bangladeshi, Chinese, Gujarati and Turkish in Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester and London. The project aims to explore the social, cultural and linguistic significance of complementary schools both within their communities and in wider society, and to investigate how linguistic practices of students and teachers in complementary schools are used to negotiate their multilingual and multicultural identities. The project will observe students and teachers for ten weeks in two schools in each of the four communities, using participant observation, field notes and video-recording. Two children from each school will be selected for more detailed observation and audio-recording. Analysis will enable us to understand how young people are using the full range of their linguistic resources and how these language practices relate to their developing identities. The study will identify similarities and differences between the four cultural, religious and linguistic contexts, developing new knowledge of previously under-researched educational and linguistic settings, to inform policy and practice for the future of complementary schools.

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