Open Access

Elizabeth J. Erling, Anouschka Foltz

• This chapter reports on our research investigating the opportunity gap in English language learning in Austria. Building on previous work, we present novel data from a questionnaire study, which explores whether teachers’ beliefs about their students’ social backgrounds relate to their beliefs about their students’ uses of and needs for English, and compares the two main types of lower secondary school. Descriptive and inferential analyses of results reveal differences in teachers’ beliefs about students’ abilities, social opportunities, and prospective futures with regard to English learning. Teachers in higher-status schools have more positive beliefs about their students’ achievement in English and their school and home environments, including parents’ education levels and abilities to support their children at school. These findings suggest that students in lower-status schools are perceived as more disadvantaged than students in higher-status schools, indicating that English learning is likely to perpetuate disadvantage for the underserved and expand the benefits of the privileged in higher-status schools, instead of working to level the playing field. We thus argue that teacher education initiatives must be accompanied by efforts to dismantle the inequitable system of early tracking and school segregation.