Under the influence of the European Commission, Greek governmental agencies responsible for policies on teaching foreign languages (FLs) have taken considerable steps to implement European-based policies and instruments. Hence, the “mother tongue plus 2” objective (European Commission, 2002) has been implemented starting from primary school. Also, a state language certificate and a unified national curriculum for FL teaching have been introduced. However, these policies plus attempts of successive governments to strengthen FL teaching in state schools haven’t been successful in reducing the traditionally dominant shadow education which derives legitimation from the widely held belief that FLs are best learnt privately (Papaefthymiou-Lytra, 2012). Additional challenges for FL teaching in public schools are set by mixed-ability classes often of varied linguistic and cultural backgrounds owing to the recent influx of immigrants/refugees. This study builds on previous research which indicates that new forms of education privatisation (NEP) have emerged (Sifakakis, et al., 2016; Tsatsaroni, et al., 2020; Kamarianos et al., 2019) in conditions where supranational pressures to modernise the school system coincided with the overwhelming consequences of the country’s fiscal crisis. It explores the ways NEP has been enacted in schools in relation to ESOL teaching. In particular, it examines questions of social justice in and through the promoted policies of ESOL teaching and the emergence of NEP, especially regarding school environments where varying percentages of students are in the process of acquiring Greek as a second language and/or a considerable percentage of students does not have access to private FL tuition. Based on official documents on systemic changes and school education policies, and semi-structured interviews with school principals, teachers and representatives of local government and private entities, we aim to identify changes in the strength of boundaries between private and public (Bernstein, 2000) and the discourses legitimating them. Our motivating assumption is that new local forms of privatisation have emerged in spaces created by specific structural changes and political ideas filtered in varying degrees and intensity in individual schools (Verger et al., 2016). Initial data analysis indicates that NEP and ESOL provision are embedded and rearticulated in dominant discourses of quality and equity in education and the value of English in a market-driven, globalised world. These discourses are gradually reshaping schools’ and teachers’ professional practices, priorities and values.

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