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Socio-emotional development is increasingly recognised as playing a central role in children’s academic achievement. However, little is known about the socio-emotional development of language-minority children on entry to school and how these children fare in comparison to their language-majority peers. To address this gap, longitudinal data on the socio-emotional outcomes of language-minority children in Ireland at five years of age were analysed. Teacher ratings on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) indicated comparable outcomes for language-minority and language-majority children upon entry into formal schooling. Further, language-minority children with poor English vocabulary skills were rated more favourably by their teachers than language-majority peers with poor English vocabulary skills, and, language-minority children had better teacher ratings on the SDQ when important child …