Complementary schools as heritage language communities of practice: reaching beyond language maintenance

This chapter sets out to address the concern that community-heritage languages (C-HLs) are marginalised in mainstream schooling in England and indeed across the world. Drawing on stakeholders’ views in six community-based language schools teaching Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Korean, Polish, and Spanish respectively, we develop an evidence-based understanding of the full range of purposes of C-HL schools in the education of migrant-background children. Our research shows that while linguistic, educational and some cultural skills are more explicitly taught, the social and emotional skills and some other subtle elements of how we share diasporic inheritance are implicitly embedded in the C-HL practices within the schools. In doing so, the chapter raises awareness of the importance and value of complementary schooling which we argue can be theorised as language communities of practice. We propose a multidimensional model encompassing five purposes: Social integration, Emotional wellbeing, Language maintenance, Educational opportunity, and Cultural inheritance (SELEC). We argue that a progressive policy agenda for planning and developing complementary schooling (CS) in England and in similar contexts across the world is needed which will benefit not only migrant-background children attending these schools but also society at large.