This research from the University of Cambridge indicates that young people who regard themselves as multilingual typically outperform their peers in non-language subjects including maths, geography and science. This is regardless of whether they are fluent in a second language.
Some students, described by their schools as having English as an additional language (EAL), did not think of themselves as multilingual. Despite speaking multiple languages, these students did not necessarily perform better or worse as a group at GCSE than their non-EAL peers.
The evidence suggests that the more multilingual you consider yourself to be, the higher your GCSE scores. This may be because children who see themselves as multilingual have a ‘growth mindset’ which impacts on wider attainment.
The study involved 818 Year 11 students at five secondary schools in the South East of England. It established whether the children were officially registered as having English as a second language or if they were non-EAL, and the students were asked if they personally identified as such.
Separately, each student was asked to plot where they saw themselves on a nought to 100 scale, where nought represented “monolingual” and 100 “multilingual”.