Revealed: The 2,000 schools where more than HALF of pupils don’t speak English as their first language

25 comments

1. So what. I bet they speak it perfectly well as a second.

2. The right wing propaganda machine is really going all out on the immigration stuff right now eh. 

3. Fantasic that language skills are improving in our nation. Being bilingual is great for employabilty for the job market.

4. Oh look, the Daily Mail.
   You’d get better information from used toilet paper.

5. English as the second language doesn’t necessarily mean you’re more fluent at your first language or that you use it more or less. English is my second language (by definition) but I can barely say anything more than basic sentences in my first language.

   For example at my school 65% of pupils’ first language wasn’t English. Yet about 80% of us got C or above in English GCSE.

   Another example is a kid whose family speak Polish at home would be classified as having English as his second language.

   Not sure why I’m explaining this because those that need this explaining to won’t give a fuck lol.

6. They really tie themselves in knots to stir hatred. In 6% of schools half the pupils are bilingual, which is great news since being being bilingual has well proven benefits to learning, protects the brain from neurodegenerative diseases in the old age and opens up the country to world wide opportunities.

7. Who cares? When I worked in a school the Polish and Romanian kids always picked up English very fast. The Sikh kids already came to school speaking two languages. And the bilingual kids always did better in French or German because once you have a couple of languages under your belt extra ones are easy.

8. CONTEXT!!!
   2000 sounds like alot. until you remember that there are 32,000 schools in the uk.

   these people are complaining that 6% of schools across an entire multicultural nation with 4 native languages dont have majority english students.

9. Does it matter, as long as they speak English well enough to learn?

   Why does the Daily Mail hate children who can speak more than one language?

10. 2,000 out of 32,000 with national total of 32 million pupils. That makes average 1,000 pupils in each school and half of that is the target of Daily Racist.

    So that’s 100,000 pupils with English as a SECOND language, studying a national curriculum that’s in IN ENGLISH, which means they DO speak English.

    And that’s including Italian, German, Welsh, Irish, Romanian, East European, Ukranian and other European families. What everyone speaks behind closed doors is their business.

    What’s the Daily Fail going to do once their Middle-England base all die off?

11. I learnt English and Spanish at the exact same time, which is my first language?

12. Does the line between first and second language get a bit blurry for school-age kids that grow up with both at the same time?

    If you speak Polish at home but English at school, and you’re at school most of the day, you’d end up being fluent in both.

13. I worked in a school where roughly half the kids were classed as EAL. Nearly all of them spoke English as fluently as any native speaker. It’s great that these kids will help improve this country’s disastrous multilingual efforts.

14. For context there are about 32,000 schools in the UK. If we’re generous and assume that more than half means 75% of pupils in those 2,000 schools and use schools as a unit of measurement, that means that 1,500 schools equivalent of pupils don’t have English as a first language.

    I’ve not clicked so don’t know if they break this down into primary or secondary, but, again being generous, let’s say these 1,500 schools are all huge comps and have 2,000 pupils. So that’s 3 million kids, and that is out of a demographic of about 15 million (0 to 18 is 15,075,00 so I’ve rounded it down to account for kids not yet in nursery/early years/primary).

    So standing back, and readjusting for my generosity – what more than half is and how big each shchool is – I’d reckon we are looking at probably tops 2 million kids out of 15 million kids are lucky enough to be growing up bilingual.

15. Finally give English teachers something to do

16. I have vague memories of when I was at primary school in like year 3-4, we had a Somalian classmate who didn’t know much English. Either that, or she was shy, im not sure. But the only words she knew were how to call on the teacher.

    Over the years, she started learning and gaining confidence, and by the end of year 6, her English was really strong.

    Idk if this story has relevance, but if there are schools with children who struggle with speaking English, then it’s a good start that they’re in school in the first place to learn.

17. In 2 generations this will treble

18. Theres nothing more english than a newspaper saying ‘alot of kids speak multiple languages in the uk’ and meaning that as a bad thing

19. The criteria for a pupil to be considered EAL is based on what their parents put on their paperwork. Many of them are more fluent in English than English children. 

    A part of me doesn’t even want to comment on this just because the Mail are such scum and I don’t want to add to engagement, but this is something I’ve actually had to do a lot of work around.

    It’s literally leveraging readers’ xenophobia and it seems like any journalistic standards have now gone out of the window in a way which wasn’t here before. Perhaps the shift from traditional print to online and the need for clicks has now finally broken it all down. The Mail is about as reliable as the Daily Sport and only about ten percent as entertaining.

20. Why is this a problem?

    This does not translate to a lack of comprehension of English.

    My first language isn’t English, it’s Chinese. However I speak better English than the majority of the country.

    In fact bilingual children tend to perform far better at school than their English only counterparts.

21. So? I would encourage parents who speak a different language to speak it with their children, they’ll learn English from school and media anyway.

22. So what?

    The article then wheels out a load of talking heads from right wing think tanks and organisations based out of 55 Tufton Street to try and prove their point.

    Unashamed xenophobic shit stirring.

23. Doesn’t surprise me there’s that much.
    20 years ago… I would be…

24. Racist dog whistle bullshit post

25. What the point of this article? Sure a few have gotten upset that some pupils don’t speak English only.

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