This paper reports ongoing research with (distance) teacher training students and their partner schools in the south of England. The investigation focuses on how trainees, working in partner schools with bilingual pupils, meet the Standards for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Although TTA Standards (2002) state that "trainers may provide additional training...relevant to the traditions or needs of a region, such as training to work in multilingual classrooms", there is a gap in exemplifying how such training should be carried out. In an increasingly multi-ethnic society, trainee teachers need to be aware of the positive attributes bilingual learners bring to the classroom, and this research highlights the training needs of these student teachers. Learning to teach in bilingual communities is an important question for the Open University's PGCE since partner schools are spread across England, (as well as Wales and Northern Ireland), and reflect the monolingual or bilingual make up of their communities. Some will contain a majority of bilingual pupils, others will have only a tiny minority. The research takes a multi-level approach, analyzing the national and local policy documents before describing training needs drawn from a range of interview data (PGCE trainees, school coordinators, mentors, English as an Additional Language specialists, ITT tutors and Local Education Authority officers).Results reveal that in policy terms, bilingualism is either ignored entirely, or presented from a deficit model perspective, (characterized as the "problem" of English as an Additional Language). In school- based training, little appears to be done to foster the strength that bilingual pupils bring to their classes as a result of their awareness and knowledge of more than one language. There is little in existing policy documentation and training which supports the trainee teacher in meeting the Standards through their work with bilingual pupils. If student teachers do not ask, the message seems to be that they may not be trained to a high quality in teaching bilingual pupils. In the future, as understanding of the initial training needs of mainstream teachers in bilingual classrooms develops, high quality training for all staff (sharing the best practice) as well as introductory materials for ITT will be increasingly necessary. However, the gap in training is clear in relation to schools without (or unaware) of a critical mass of bilingual pupils. As one school commented:We don't expect to teach trainees in these areas...we would assume that they (the HEI) would provide some training...there is too little time and too much to learn...there is a limit to time and resources for how detailed you can go into each tiny standard.This research challenges distance teacher education to fill the bilingualism gap.