Hello and welcome to Nursery World’s webinar on ‘Multilingualism in the early years: Celebrating every child’, in partnership with Polylino.

Polylino is a multilingual digital picture book service for nurseries and primary schools to use with children up to the age of seven.

Multilingualism is the norm on a global scale – more children in the world grow up to be multilingual than monolingual. The latest figures show that England may be heading in that direction – in 2021/22 almost one in three [29.1 per cent] of children in state-funded nurseries had English as an additional language

With the number of bilingual and multilingual children increasing in nurseries and pre-schools in the UK, we will look at approaches that celebrate and support them as well as strategies to ensure all children are engaged in their setting’s language and literacy learning, while looking at how multilingualism can promote inclusive practice and children’s understanding of the world. We will also discuss different ways to work with parents and how digital solutions can be key to pulling everything together.
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    Penny Tassoni
    Penny Tassoni is a well-known education consultant, author and trainer who specialises in the whole spectrum of learning and play within early years. President of PACEY since 2013. She has written and spoken extensively on multilingualism in the early years for Nursery World.
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    Dhanvanti Deshmukh
    Nursery Manager
    Dhanvanti Deshmukh is a nursery manager at LEYF. LEYF champions diversity and believes that children need role models from all walks of life; many staff are multilingual and 58 per cent are from a BAME background
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    Louise Campbell White
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    Craig Johnstone
    CEO and Founder
    Craig Johnstone is CEO and Founder of Giglets Education. Originally a school enterprise project, Giglets has since developed into an award-winning digital business. With more than 1,300 digital titles across 38 languages and supporting curriculum resources, Giglets has grown to be a popular literacy resource and suite of content used by hundreds of schools across the UK and internationally.
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    Karen Faux
    Editor, Nursery World