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Advancing Arabic Education in the UK: Reflections and Resources

Aug 12, 2026

By Tony Calderbank

Introduction

Over the past decade, the learning and teaching of Arabic in the UK has grown significantly. Collaboration between educators, researchers, institutions, and government bodies has strengthened teacher practice, advanced research, and expanded opportunities for learners.

While QFI's support for this work, beginning in 2015, is coming to a close, the momentum created by this community continues. The sections that follow bring together research and resources from the past decade, highlighting key areas of Arabic language teaching in the UK and signpost research and resources to support educators' ongoing practice.

  1. Who Is Learning Arabic in the UK?
    Arabic learners in the UK come from diverse linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds. Understanding their motivations, experiences, and needs is essential for designing effective instruction and creating meaningful learning experiences.

    Scroll to #1 below     explore research on the changing demographics of Arabic learners and approaches that support both heritage and non-heritage learners.

  2. Pedagogy
    The teaching of Arabic continues to evolve alongside broader developments in modern foreign language education. Research, professional learning, and collaboration have encouraged more communicative, learner-centered approaches while maintaining the linguistic rigor of Arabic instruction.

    Scroll to #2 below     to explore current pedagogical thinking and the practices shaping Arabic classrooms today.

  3. How is Arabic Assessed?
    Assessment plays an important role in student motivation and long-term language learning. Arabic educators continue to examine whether current qualifications reflect the needs and abilities of today's learners, particularly those who are new to the language.

    Scroll to #3 below to explore current assessment models, ongoing challenges, and emerging alternatives that may broaden opportunities for learners

  4. Variety and Diglossia
    The relationship between Modern Standard Arabic and the many regional dialects spoken across the Arab world is a defining characteristic of the language. This linguistic diversity presents both opportunities and challenges for teachers.

    Scroll to #4 below     to explore the role of diglossia in Arabic language instruction and the conversations surrounding its place in the classroom.

  5. The Arabic Teacher Experience
    Arabic teachers navigate one of the most linguistically diverse classroom environments found in language education. They support learners with different levels of proficiency, cultural experiences, and relationships to the language, while balancing questions of pedagogy, assessment, and language variety.

    Scroll to #5 below to explore research, practical guidance, and resources that support teachers in addressing these challenges.

  6. The Teaching of Arabic Is Evolving
    Arabic language teaching has become increasingly aligned with contemporary approaches to language instruction. Professional development, teacher preparation programmes, and communities of practice have supported more communicative and learner-centered teaching.

    Scroll to #6 below to explore research and discussion on the evolution of Arabic language teaching.

  7. Support for Teachers
    Professional growth depends on strong networks, high-quality resources, and opportunities for collaboration. Through Arabic Teacher Councils, professional development, mentoring, and communities of practice, educators have built an increasingly connected, supportive professional community.

    Scroll to #7 below to explore the organizations, initiatives, and materials that continue to strengthen Arabic teaching across the UK.

1. Who is Learning Arabic in the UK?

The majority of Arabic learners in English schools are of Arab or Musim background, “heritage” learners; although that nomenclature has proven to be highly problematic and imprecise, particularly in the major British cities where learners hail from a rich variety of backgrounds. Some speak one of the Arab dialects at home, sometimes alongside a third language, others have learned to recite the Quran and can read the written word but are unable to communicate in spoken language.

There is no doubt that for these learners, their heritage is a major motivating factor in learning Arabic. They learn the language in both state funded schools and supplementary and independent schools, many are highly plurilingual with linguistic repertoires that embrace a range of languages and varieties alongside mainstream English. QFI’s annual Arabic Speaking Competition resonated powerfully with the heritage speaking community and hundreds of such learners have taken part in it, they and their parents citing a desire to preserve and celebrate their culture and identity.

In Scotland where QFI and SCILT have worked in partnership to offer Arabic to pupils in state schools most leaners are of non-heritage non-Muslim background and of the thousand or so currently learning the language many are in rural or island communities; schools in Aberdeenshire, Orkney and Mull have offered the language to their pupils. The Scottish experience speaks of another kind of learning environment, one where schools and pupils in less diverse communities are keen to explore new languages and learn about other cultures and communities.

Much has been written about home heritage and community language learning and the most suitable pedagogic approaches to teach heritage learners as well as the role of supplementary schools where many of them learn. Three pieces are attached below which look at the heritage language context: Soliman and Khalil look at the teaching of Arabic as a community language in the UK, Professor Yaron Matras and Dr Petros Karatsareas investigate strategies for community language maintenance and respond to the “inequality that underpins the use of the terms ‘community’ versus ‘modern languages.’ The information paper from ASCL, Goldsmiths and CIOL sets out advice for secondary schools and trusts around supporting community and heritage languages.

2. Pedagogy

All of this of course is set against the UK’s wider MFL pedagogy landscape. The 2016 MFL pedagogy review by the Teaching Schools Council outlined an approach to language teaching which revolves around the three pillars of vocabulary, grammar, and phonics, and while not uncontested, it has shaped much of what takes place in current language classrooms. Teachers reinforce this knowledge with practice using the language in order to build the skills needed for communication. At the same time the role of culture, history and literature is acknowledged as a core element of the language learning experience. There is no doubt that these recommendations have influenced the way Arabic is being taught in England as a result of the improved and more readily available CPD that Arabic teachers can access, and their growing participation in events such as ALL’s Language World.

Changes in pedagogy, however, do not seem to have led to greater numbers of students taking languages. In fact, numbers continue to fall, and there are growing patches of language deprivation in areas across the country where some pupils never learn a language. University language departments have been forced to close due to lack of take up at the tertiary level. Against this gloomy backdrop, Arabic continued to register slow but steady growth with GCSE entries reaching an all-time high of 5256 in 2024, only to drop back to 5115 in 2025. Figures for A level remain low and fell from 682 in 2024 to 601 in 2025, meaning that just over 10% of those taking the GCSE go on to do the A level.

3. How is Arabic Assessed?

The GCSE despite its being the “gold standard” continues to be a bone of contention, with many Arabic teachers believing that the exam is skewed toward native and Arab heritage speakers, and too difficult for those learners with no prior experience of, or exposure to, Arabic. A 2017 review of policy and accreditation reports one teacher who describes the Arabic GCSE as inherently “harder” than other MFLs such as French or Spanish and that beginners need much more time with Arabic to reach the level required by the examination than they do for European languages. This impression is widespread and it is common to hear Arabic teachers talking about the difficulty of the GCSE and its unsuitability for a priori learners..

Another major concern in some quarters about the GCSE is that it tests fuSHa exclusively. Even the speaking exam, which involves conversation around daily topics such as family, employment, and pastimes, is conducted entirely in fuSHa and consequently does not reflect the linguistic reality of Arabic native speaker competence. There are even anecdotes of examiners penalizing candidates for using dialect structures and vocabulary. Anna-Maria Ramzanzadeh’s excellent account of GCSE learner performance, One Size Fits All, shares more about the exam and talks to students.

Not surprisingly, there have been calls for a wider range of assessments that can be taken at earlier levels and are suitable for learners of the language who will not be going down the GCSE route. The good news from Scotland is that colleagues at SCILT have been working with Qualifications Scotland to introduce an Arabic strand for the Modern Languages for Life and Work Award. This is a qualification that can be delivered at levels 3, 4, 5, and 6 in the Scottish system, is suitable for a wide range of learners, and is available in a variety of languages commonly spoken in Scotland. It marks an excellent way forward for those learners who are unlikely to reach the level required by the GCSE but who would like to have their learning of Arabic accredited.

4. Variety and Diglossia

No account of the learning and teaching of Arabic can be complete without a nod to the issues posed by the diglossic nature of the language and the existence of its many dialect forms alongside the “high” “standard” variety known as fuSHa or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). When it comes to Arabic the simple sociolinguistic fact that people use different varieties of language for different purposes and with different interlocutors takes on an added dimension due to relationship that classical Arabic has with the Islamic scriptures and the fact that fuSHa is the language of the Quran. Some scholars suggest that the field of Arabic linguistics, particularly the classical Arabic study of grammar, is a theological discipline rather than a scientific one.

So, should the Arabic dialects be taught alongside fuSHa? Is colloquial Arabic the same language as MSA? Should foreigners learn to speak Arabic like native speakers do, beginning with a dialect then learning MSA once they have control of the colloquial, or should they start with MSA and then go on to acquire a dialect when they move to the Arab world and live in an Arabic speaking community? I have been attending Arabic language conferences since 1990 and the issue comes up every time, invariably generating heartfelt debate and passionate advocacy for one approach or the other.

5. The Arabic Teacher Experience

Arabic teachers have their work cut out! Not only are they dealing with a language of many varieties, but their classrooms contain learners of many backgrounds, ranging from students who speak a dialect at home, those who have learned to recite Quran and those who are complete beginners still struggling to decipher the script and get their mouths round the sounds. The different attitudes, beliefs, and opinions about which varieties of the language should be taught, and how to manage this with the wide range of learners means that various approaches are to be found. Some teachers categorically reject any involvement of dialect in their classrooms and deliver an exclusively fuSHa focused language learning experience, while others welcome variety and celebrate the dialects of their pupils, making their classrooms a what’s being called “translanguaging space” where varieties of Arabic and fuSHa can be heard alongside English and other mother tongues.

Such classes require skill and experience to teach if all learners are to feel engaged. There has been much discussion about how Arabic teacher training modules can prepare teachers to deal with pupils’ plurilingualism, as well as the sociolinguistic understanding that informs the linguistic reality of the Arabic speaking communities. As a contribution to this debate QFI commissioned the Leeds research report to provide an insight into teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about teaching dialect alongside fuSHa and drew up guidelines which offer advice and suggestions as to how the regional varieties can be included alongside fuSHa in the Arabic classroom.

6. The Teaching of Arabic is Evolving

A 2016 report into how Arabic was being taught in schools showed that although teachers were familiar with the communicative approach they were more likely to adopt approaches akin to the audiolingual in their actual teaching; an essentially teacher centered delivery model with learners repeating vocabulary and new language. Many Arabic teachers, themselves mother tongue speakers, often taught the language in the way they had learned it in their own countries, focusing on grammar, correctness of form, learning about the rules of the language rather than learning to communicate in it. This approach was confounded even more by the fact that the variety of Arabic being taught, MSA, is not used in the Arabic speaking community for much day-to-day communication.

There is no doubt that the teaching of Arabic has come along leaps and bounds over the last ten years.  Professional development interventions have inspired teachers of Arabic to think about how they teach and how learners learn. The Goldsmiths diploma (Teaching Arabic Language | Goldsmiths, University of London) has provided dozens of Arabic teachers with a solid grounding in communicative teaching practice and encouraged reflection and innovation; some Arabic teachers have gone on to complete PGCE’s with Arabic as one of their languages and are now employed as fully fledged MFL teachers, employing the same methodologies and approaches to the teaching of Arabic as their colleagues who teach French and Spanish.

7. Support for Teachers

The network of QFI supported Arabic Teacher Councils (ATCs) in England that has emerged over the last six years has also played a major role in has delivering professional development workshops for Arabic teachers, covering topics such as the use of technology, presenting and practicing language, integrating culture, preparing for the GCSE examination, classroom management and many more. The ATCs have also been an opportunity for Arabic teachers to come together and share experiences and challenges, emerging as communities of practice, ending the isolation that many Arabic teachers used to experience, and contributing to the professionalization of Arabic teaching. QFI’s annual Autumn Institute, an intensive three-day development experience, has also introduced dozens of Arabic teachers to innovative teaching approaches and the latest developments in MFL pedagogy.

At the 2025 Institute, which focused on learner motivation, we asked participants to sign up to a mentorship journey where they chose to address, over the spring and summer terms, a specific motivational issue with their classes and to develop materials and activities to address it, working under the guidance of an Arabic teacher mentor. They reported on the results of their projects at an event in London in June, and we were bowled over by their presentations. Not only did they report enhanced engagement, greater learner participation of previously shy and unconfident students, and improved learner outcomes, they demonstrated that they had reflected upon their practice, identified challenges, considered how they might enhance and improve, and designed and tried out lessons and activities to motivate and excite their learners and make learning fun.

Among the conclusions they reached were that students are more motivated when Arabic learning is linked to culture, identity, and personal experience, that students respond positively when their experiences and cultures are valued within the classroom, and that motivation is strengthened when learning is enjoyable, appropriately challenging, and adapted to individual needs. Several teachers who experimented with project-based learning activities all concluded that learners learn more, and are better engaged, when they do real things with language that mean something to them, are given autonomy, purposeful tasks, and opportunities to connect Arabic learning to their own culture and experiences, and that learners respond best to teaching when given ownership and choice.

As TAMFL, teaching Arabic as a modern foreign language, continues to evolve and innovate, the time has come for QFI to hand over the baton to the very practitioners who have done so much to bring Arabic into the mainstream. It has been a great privilege to work with Arabic educators in the UK, and to be part of their journey, witnessing the shift from lessons which involved memorizing vocabulary lists and reciting verb forms to community action projects and culture and identity assignments, with avatars providing inspirational feedback. Learners are enjoying their Arabic lessons, their voice is being heard, and teachers are delivering meaningful, relevant, and interactive lessons.

For the very latest account of the status of Arabic learning and teaching in the UK, you can check out the Global SALP report 2026. Published by QFI and the Institute of International Education (IIE), this report examines how policies and local conditions shape Arabic language programs for school-aged learners in six countries, including the UK. Drawing on the findings, it highlights the status of UK Arabic language education, identifies challenges within the field, and shares opportunities to strengthen Arabic language education.

Tony Calderbank

If you would like to contact Tony Calderbank with any additional information or questions, he can be reached at:
Email: tony.calderbank@gmail.com

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