The exclusion or marginalisation of minority languages within schools effectively reinforces “the monolingual bias” inherent in monolingual education systems. In settings where majority languages with a colonial history are spoken, such as English and French, residual traces of cultural oppression and linguistic dominance remain. This is evident when newly-arrived migrant students are treated as linguistically deficient (Smythe, 2023), or when minority languages are rendered invisible within education systems (Major, 2018). Within such contexts therefore, the treatment of language diversity in education raises important questions about freedoms, rights and inclusion of minority language speakers. This issue is explored in a small-scale comparative study on how initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in Aotearoa New Zealand and France prepare teachers for working with linguistically diverse students. Within ITE programmes in both countries, training for working with minority language students remains largely segregated into specialised pathways. In consequence, the majority of mainstream classroom teachers are often under-prepared for teaching linguistically diverse students.