Cypriot Greek in UK Greek complementary schools: curriculum policies, classroom practices, and language ideologies

This article examines how Cypriot Greek is positioned at the interface of curriculum policy, classroom practice, and language ideologies in UK Greek complementary schools (GCSs). Drawing on ethnographic data collected over six months in 2018 in two North London GCSs, we analyse (a) curriculum documents produced for Greek complementary schools, (b) classroom interactions, and (c) pupil perspectives from one case-study school. The curricula formally acknowledge Cypriot Greek but frame it in limited and bounded ways. Standard Greek is constructed as the legitimate target for literacy, while Cypriot Greek is treated as permissible mainly in oral communication and often linked to cultural tradition. Classroom data show how these policy framings are recontextualised in teaching and learning, particularly in moments where exam-related expectations are made salient. The teacher’s practices reproduce a literacy–oracy binary and discourage the use of Cypriot Greek in writing, while pupils display uncertainty about what is allowed and orient to assessment as a key rationale for avoiding Cypriot forms. We argue that, although flexible multilingual practices also occur in everyday interaction, exam-thematised episodes make visible how assessment regimes can intensify standardising pressures that are rooted in broader hellenocentric hierarchies and in limited institutional support for repertoire-based pedagogies. We conclude by calling for more systematic curricular guidance, materials, and teacher education that legitimise pupils’ full repertoires and support metalinguistic work across varieties in home, heritage and community language education.