EALD stands for English as Additional Language or Dialect.
EALD was previously called ESL (English as Second Language).
In our school we have a large number of students that learned to speak another language before they spoke in English. These students have English as a Second or Additional Language.
Some students were born in Australia, but their parents' first language is not English. These students have a Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE).
Specialised teachers work with these EALD and LBOTE students if they need support with developing their English skills.
Interesting facts:
At Macquarie Fields Public School most EALD students speak Bengali as their first language. Other languages spoken at home are: Hindi, Arabic, Marati, Samoan, Vietnamese, Urdu, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, Sinhalese, Malayam, Tongan, Tamil, Telugu, Serbian/Croation, Greek, Cantonese, French, African, Kannada, Philipino, Indonesian, Thai, Kurdish, Khmer, Polish, Nepali, Somali, Russian, Hungary, Punjabi, Fijian, Italian, Hokkien, Konkani, Lao and Norwegian.