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This presentation focuses on interview and observation data from English education at The Language Introduction Program (LIP) in Sweden. The study draws on Foucauldian (2002) perspectives involving power structures and equality, exploring language ideology (Kroskrity, 2000) and access to equal education within the multilingual classroom. 

LIP is a transit program for newly arrived immigrants in Sweden at upper-secondary school (Swedish National Agency of Education, 2013). The goal is to secure a fast transit for the student to further education or to the job market. In Swedish society English plays an important role in accessing higher education and job market (Swedish National Agency of Education, 2018) and insufficient knowledge of English might affect the access to these. Inadequate writing proficiency will eventually lead to inequality in education, thus in a longer perspective inequality in society. 

The chosen method is linguistic ethnography with observations and interviews and the duration of the field study is approximately one school year. Semi-structured interviews focusing on students, teachers, principals, special needs educators, educational interpreters, and student counsellors were conducted.  

The results indicate inequality regarding assessment and access to significant educational support for the students and teachers within English education at LIP. In addition, the organisation of LIP also limits the ability for teachers to cooperate and assist each other with assessment, planning, and evaluation of education. Furthermore, assessment and teaching of writing skills were closely connected to the teaching of grammatical rules and sentence analysis. As a result, very little time was dedicated to focus on the actual writing processes within the classroom.

The presentation draws on preliminary results regarding educational discourses, power structures, and writing comprehension related to language ideologies in the multilingual classroom. The right to write is connected to the right to equal education and hopefully this presentation will provide an insight in writing comprehension education taking place at The Language Introduction Program.